32-
WYLDER'S HAJVD.
"What's that?" said Mark, who had just come in, and
was tumbling over a volume of "Punch," at the win-
dow.
"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 illus-
tration 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 mar-
riages. 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 preemi-
nent 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 speak-
ing more frankly and to the purpose even than Miss
Brandon, and straight were cold chiselled marble again;
and so it was with that proud, cold chef-d'oeuvre of tinted
statuary.
The Princess by this time was seated on the ottoman,
and chose to read a letter, thus intimating, I suppose, that
my audience was at an end; so I took up a book, put it
down, and then went and looked over Wylder's shoulder,