sentence intended a question, and the blank ending caught up the query
tone and carried it dwindling away to the most distant of throttled
interrogatives. She had, in this manner, only to ask,--her hearing
received the comforting answer it desired; for she could take that thin
far sound as a travelling laughter of incredulity, triumphant derision.

This meant to her--though she scarcely knew it, though the most wilful of
women declined to know it--a state of alarm. She had said of her brother
in past days that he would have his time of danger after striking sixty.
The dangerous person was to be young.

But, then, Ormont had high principles with regard to the dues to his
family. His principles could always be trusted. The dangerous young
person would have to be a person of lineage, of a certain station at
least: no need for a titled woman, only for warranted good blood. Is
that to be found certificated out of the rolls of Society? It may just
possibly be found, without certificate, however, in those muddled caverns
where the excluded intermingle. Here and there, in a peasant family,
or a small country tradesman's just raised above a peasant, honest
regenerating blood will be found. Nobles wanting refreshment from the
soil might do worse than try a slip of one of those juicy weeds; ill-
fated, sickly Royalties would be set-up striding through another half-
century with such invigoration, if it could be done for them! There are
tales. The tales are honourably discredited by the crazy constitutions
of the heirs to the diadem.

Yes, but we are speculating on the matter seriously, as though it were
one of intimate concern to the family. What is there to make us think
that Ormont would marry? Impossible to imagine him intimidated.
Unlikely that he, a practised reader of women, having so little of the