“It is that I happen to have become a partner in a House of business in London, to which Mr. Obenreizer happens this very day to be expressly recommended:  and that, too, by another house of business in Switzerland, in which (as it turns out) we both have a commercial interest.  He has not told you?”

“Ah!” cried Obenreizer, striking in, filmless.  “No.  I had not told Miss Marguerite.  The world is so small and so monotonous that a surprise is worth having in such a little jog-trot place.  It is as he tells you, Miss Marguerite.  He, of so fine a family, and so proudly bred, has condescended to trade.  To trade!  Like us poor peasants who have risen from ditches!”

A cloud crept over the fair brow, and she cast down her eyes.

“Why, it is good for trade!” pursued Obenreizer, enthusiastically.  “It ennobles trade!  It is the misfortune of trade, it is its vulgarity, that any low people—­for example, we poor peasants—­may take to it and climb by it.  See you, my dear Vendale!” He spoke with great energy.  “The father of Miss Marguerite, my eldest half-brother, more than two times your age or mine, if living now, wandered without shoes, almost without rags, from that wretched Pass—­wandered—­wandered—­got to be fed with the mules and dogs at an Inn in the main valley far away—­got to be Boy there—­got to be Ostler—­got to be Waiter—­got to be Cook—­got to be Landlord.  As Landlord, he took me (could he take the idiot beggar his brother, or the spinning monstrosity his sister?) to put as pupil to the famous watchmaker, his neighbour and friend.  His wife dies when Miss Marguerite is born.  What is his will, and what are his words to me, when he dies, she being between girl and woman?  ’All for Marguerite, except so much by the year for you.  You are young, but I make her your ward, for you were of the obscurest and the poorest peasantry, and so was I, and so was her mother; we were abject peasants all, and you will remember it.’  The thing is equally true of most of my countrymen, now in trade in this your London quarter of Soho.  Peasants once; low-born drudging Swiss Peasants.  Then how good and great for trade:”  here, from having been warm, he became playfully jubilant, and touched the young wine-merchant’s elbows again with his light embrace:  “to be exalted by gentlemen.”

“I do not think so,” said Marguerite, with a flushed cheek, and a look away from the visitor, that was almost defiant.  “I think it is as much exalted by us peasants.”

“Fie, fie, Miss Marguerite,” said Obenreizer.  “You speak in proud England.”

“I speak in proud earnest,” she answered, quietly resuming her work, “and I am not English, but a Swiss peasant’s daughter.”

There was a dismissal of the subject in her words, which Vendale could not contend against.  He only said in an earnest manner, “I most heartily agree with you, Miss Obenreizer, and I have already said so, as Mr. Obenreizer will bear witness,” which he by no means did, “in this house.”