“In fine, if she has enemies, she has also fanatic partisans.  If some people say she is a wretch, others—­and they are by no means the least clever—­tell you that she is an angel, only wanting wings to fly away from this wicked world.  They talk of her as of a poor little orphan-girl, whom people slander atrociously because they envy her youth, her beauty, her splendor.”

“Ah, is she so rich?”

“Miss Brandon spends at least twenty thousand dollars a year.”

“And no one inquires where they come from?”

“From her sainted father’s petroleum-wells, my dear fellow.  Petroleum explains everything.”

Brevan seemed to feel a kind of savage delight in seeing Daniel’s despair, and in explaining to him most minutely how solidly, and how skilfully Miss Sarah Brandon’s position in the world had been established.  Had he any expectation to prevent a struggle with her by exaggerating her strength?  Or rather, knowing Daniel as he did,—­far better, unfortunately, than he was known by him,—­was he trying to irritate him more and more against this formidable adversary?

At all events, he continued in that icy tone which gives to sarcasm its greatest bitterness,—­

“Besides, my dear Daniel, if you are ever introduced at Miss Brandon’s,—­and I pray you will believe me, people are not so easily introduced there,—­you will be dumfounded at first by the tone that prevails in that house.  The air is filled with a perfume of hypocrisy which would rejoice the stiffest of Quakers.  Cant rules supreme there, putting a lock to the mouth, and a check to the eyes.”

Daniel began evidently to be utterly bewildered.

“But how, how can you reconcile that,” he said, “with the thoroughly worldly life of Miss Brandon?”

“Oh, very easily, my dear fellow! and there you see the sublime policy of the three rogues.  To the outer world, Miss Brandon is all levity, indiscretion, coquettishness, and even worse.  She drives herself, shortens her petticoats, and cuts down her dress-bodies atrociously.  She says she has a right to do as she pleases, according to the code of laws which govern American young ladies.  But at home she bows to the taste and the wishes of her relative, Mrs. Brian, who displays all the extreme prudishness of the austerest Puritan.  Then she has that stiff, tall Sir Thorn ever at her side, who never jokes.  Oh! they understand each other perfectly; the parts are carefully distributed, and”—­

Daniel showed that he was utterly discouraged.

“There is no way, then, of getting hold of this woman?” he asked.

“I think not.”

“But that adventure of which you spoke some time ago?”

“Which?  That with poor Kergrist?”

“How do I know which?  It was a fearful story; that is all I remember.  What did I, at that time, care for Miss Brandon?  Now, to be sure”—­

Brevan shook his head, and said,—­