'I've not the honour of knowing Miss Lake. I had not an opportunity of
making her acquaintance yesterday; but I know her brother--so does
Wylder.'

'What's that?' said Mark, who had just come in, and was tumbling over a
volume of 'Punch' at the window.

'I was telling Miss Brandon that we both know Stanley Lake.' On hearing
which, Wylder seemed to discover something uncommonly interesting or
clever in the illustration before him; for he approached his face very
near to it, in a scrutinising way, and only said, 'Oh?'

'That marrying for love was a fatality in our family,' she continued in
the same low tone--too faint I think to reach Mark. 'They were all the
most beautiful who sacrificed themselves so--they were all unhappy
marriages. So the beauty of our family never availed it, any more than
its talents and its courage; for there were clever and witty men, as well
as very brave ones, in it. Meaner houses have grown up into dukedoms;
ours never prospers. I wonder what it is.'

'Many families have disappeared altogether, Miss Brandon. It is no small
thing, through so many centuries, to have retained your ancestral
estates, and your pre-eminent position, and even this splendid residence
of so many generations of your lineage.'

I thought that Miss Brandon, having broken the ice, was henceforth to be
a conversable young lady. But this sudden expansion was not to last. Ovid
tells us, in his 'Fasti,' how statues sometimes surprised people by
speaking more frankly and to the purpose even than Miss Brandon, and
straight were cold chiselled marble again; and so it was with that proud,