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 woman in him, would be melted by a wily girl; as women in the twilight situation have often played the trick to come into the bright beams.  How?  They do a desperate thing, and call it generosity, and then they appeal from it to my lord’s generosity; and so the two generosities drive off in a close carriage with a friend and a professional landlady for the blessing of the parson, and are legitimately united.  Women have won round fools to give way in that way.  And quite right too! thought Lady Charlotte, siding with nature and justice, as she reflected that no woman created would win round her brother to give way in that way.  He was too acute.  The moment 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?