"Is it better for anybody to be brought up to believe a lie?" said the young man. His lips had grown white, and his brow was set in very ominous darkness. "I shall hear more of this story by and by. I have to thank you, Lady Caroline, for letting in a little light upon my mind. Your opposition to my suit is amply explained." "I am glad you take it in that way, Mr. Brand," said Lady Caroline, for the first time giving him his adopted name, and smiling very amicably. "As I happened to be one of the very few people who knew or surmised anything about the matter, I thought it better to take affairs into my own hands--especially when I found that my daughter had come to your house. But for this freak of hers I should not, perhaps, have interfered. As you are no doubt prepared now to resign all hope of her, I am quite satisfied with the result of my afternoon's work. Come, Margaret." CHAPTER XXXII. THE FAILURE OF MARGARET. "Then I am to understand," said Wyvis, a sudden glow breaking out over his dark face, "that you did not make this communication carelessly, as at first I thought, but out of malice prepense?" "If you like to call it so--certainly," said Lady Caroline, with a slight shrug of her shoulders. "This was your revenge?--when you found that Margaret had come to me!" "You use strange words, Mr. Wyvis Brand. Revenge is out of date--a quite too ridiculous idea. I simply mean that I never wish to intermeddle with my neighbors' affairs, and should not have thought of bringing this matter forward if your pretentions could have been settled in an ordinary way. If Margaret"--glancing at her daughter, who stood white and thunderstricken at her side--"had behaved with submission and with modesty, I should not have had to inflict what seems to be considerable pain upon you. But it is her fault and yours. Young people should submit to the judgment of their elders: we do not refuse to gratify their wishes without good reason." Lady Caroline spoke with a cold dignity, which she did not usually assume. Margaret half covered her face with one hand, and turned aside. The sight of the slow tears trickling through her fingers almost maddened Wyvis, as he stood before her, looking alternately at her and at Lady Caroline. Mrs. Brand and Janetta were left in the background of the little group. The older woman was still weeping, and Janetta was engaged in soothing and caressing her; but neither of them lost a word which passed between the man for whom they cared and the woman whom at that moment they both sincerely hated. "But is it a good reason?" said Wyvis at last. His eye flashed beneath his dark brow, his nostril began to quiver. "If I had been Mark Brand's son, you mean, you would have given me Margaret?"