Dr Middleton bowed to the litany, feeling that occasion called for humbleness from him.

“Let us hope . . . !” he said, with unassumed penitence on behalf of his inscrutable daughter.

The ladies resumed:—­

“—­Vernon Whitford, not of his blood, is his brother!”

“—­A thousand instances!  Laetitia Dale remembers them better than we.”

“—­That any blow should strike him!”

“—­That another should be in store for him!”

“—­It seems impossible he can be quite misunderstood!”

“Let us hope . . . !” said Dr. Middleton.

“—­One would not deem it too much for the dispenser of goodness to expect to be a little looked up to!”

“—­When he was a child he one day mounted a chair, and there he stood in danger, would not let us touch him because he was taller than we, and we were to gaze.  Do you remember him, Eleanor?  ’I am the sun of the house!’ It was inimitable!”

“—­Your feelings; he would have your feelings!  He was fourteen when his cousin Grace Whitford married, and we lost him.  They had been the greatest friends; and it was long before he appeared among us.  He has never cared to see her since.”

“—­But he has befriended her husband.  Never has he failed in generosity.  His only fault is—­”

“—­His sensitiveness.  And that is—­”

“—­His secret.  And that—­”

“—­You are not to discover!  It is the same with him in manhood.  No one will accuse Willoughby Patterne of a deficiency of manlinesss:  but what is it?—­he suffers, as none suffer, if he is not loved.  He himself is inalterably constant in affection.”

“—­What it is no one can say.  We have lived with him all his life, and we know him ready to make any sacrifice; only, he does demand the whole heart in return.  And if he doubts, he looks as we have seen him to-day.”

“—­Shattered:  as we have never seen him look before.”

“We will hope,” said Dr. Middleton, this time hastily.  He tingled to say, “what it was”:  he had it in him to solve perplexity in their inquiry.  He did say, adopting familiar speech to suit the theme, “You know, ladies, we English come of a rough stock.  A dose of rough dealing in our youth does us no harm, braces us.  Otherwise we are likely to feel chilly:  we grow too fine where tenuity of stature is necessarily buffetted by gales, namely, in our self-esteem.  We are barbarians, on a forcing soil of wealth, in a conservatory of comfortable security; but still barbarians.  So, you see, we shine at our best when we are plucked out of that, to where hard blows are given, in a state of war.  In a state of war we are at home, our men are high-minded fellows, Scipios and good legionaries.  In the state of peace we do not live in peace:  our native roughness breaks out in unexpected places, under extraordinary aspects—­tyrannies, extravagances, domestic exactions:  and if we have not had sharp early training . . . within and