ment the woman showed sign of becoming an actress,
her doom was written. "Poor idiot!" was not uncharitably inscribed by
the sisterly lady on the tombstone of hopes aimed with scarce pardonable
ambition at her brother.

She blew away the rumour. Ormont, she vowed, had not entitled any woman
to share and bear his title. And this was her interpretation of the
report: he permitted (if he did permit) the woman to take his name, that
he might have a scornful fling at the world maltreating him. Besides,
the name was not published, it was not to be seen in the papers; it
passed merely among male friends, tradesmen, servants: no great harm in
that.

Listen further. Here is an unknown girl: why should he marry her? A girl
consenting to the place beside a man of his handsome ripe age, is either
bought, or she is madly enamoured; she does not dictate terms. Ormont
is not of the brute buyers in that market. One sees it is the girl who
leads the dance. A girl is rarely so madly enamoured as when she falls
in love with her grandfather; she pitches herself at his head. This
had not happened for the first time in Ormont's case; and he had never
proposed marriage. Why should he do it now?

But again, if the girl has breeding to some extent, he might think it
her due that she should pass under the safeguard of his name, out of
sight.

Then, so far the report is trustworthy. We blow the rumour out of
belief. A young woman there is: she is not a wife. Lady Charlotte
allowed her the fairly respectable post of Hecate of the Shades, as long
as the girl was no pretender to the place and name in the upper sphere.
Her deductions were plausible, convincing to friends shaken by her
vehement manner of coming at them. She convinced herself by means of her
multitude of reasons for not pursuing inquiry. Her brother said nothing.
There was no need for him to speak. He seemed on one or two occasions in
the act of getting himself together for the communication of a secret;
and she made ready to listen hard, with ears, eyebrows, shut month, and
a gleam at the back of her eyes, for a signification of something she
would refer him to after he had spoken. He looked at her and held his
peace, or virtually held it,--that is, he said not one word on the
subject she was to have told him she had anticipated. Lady Charlotte
ascribed it to his recollection of the quick blusher, the pained
blusher, she was in her girlhood at mention or print of the story of men