"Dearest Janetta, who else could there be? Who else have I seen? I have been kept in the schoolroom until now--when I am to be married to this most suitable man! Now, confess, Janetta, would you like it? Do your people want to marry you to anybody?" "No, indeed," said Janetta, smiling. "Nobody has expressed any desire that way. But really I don't know what to say, Margaret; because Sir Philip does seem so perfectly suitable--and you say you like him?" "Yes, but I only like him; I don't love him." Margaret leaned back in her chair, crossed her hands behind her golden head, and looked dreamily at the opposite wall. "You know I think one ought to love the man one marries--don't you think so? I have always thought of loving once and once only--like Paul and Virginia, you know, or even Romeo and Juliet--and of giving _all_ for love! That would be beautiful!" "Yes, it would. But it would be very hard too," said Janetta, thinking how lovely Margaret looked, and what a heroine of romance--what a princess of dreams--she would surely be some day. And she, poor, plain, brown, little Janetta! There was probably no romance in store for her at all. But Life holds many secrets in her hand; and perhaps it was Janetta and not Margaret for whom a romance was yet in store. "Hard? Do you call it hard?" Margaret asked, with a curiously exalted expression, like that of a saint absorbed in mystic joys. "It would be most easy, Janetta, to give up everything for love." "I don't know," said Janetta--for once unsympathetic. "Giving up everything means a great deal. Would you like to go away from Helmsley Court, for instance, and live in a dingy street with no lady's maid--only a servant of all-work--on three hundred a year?" "I think I could do anything for a man whom I loved," sighed Margaret; "but I cannot feel as if I should ever care enough for Sir Philip Ashley to do it for him." "What sort of a man would you prefer for a husband, then?" asked Janetta. "Oh, a man with a history. A man about whom there hung a melancholy interest--a man like Rochester in 'Jane Eyre'----" "Not a very good-tempered person, I'm afraid!" "Oh, who cares about good temper?" "I do, for one. Really, Margaret, you draw a picture which is just like my cousin, Wyvis Brand." Janetta was sorry when she had said the words. Margaret's arms came down from behind her head, and her eyes were turned to her friend's face with an immediate awakening of interest. "Mr. Brand, of Brand Hall, you mean? I remember you told me that he was your cousin. So you have met him? And he is like Rochester?" "I did not say that exactly," said Janetta, becoming provoked with herself. "I only said that you spoke of a rather melancholy sort of man, with a bad temper, and I thought that the description applied very well to Mr. Brand." "What is he like? Dark?" "Yes." "Handsome?" "I suppose so. I do not like any face, however handsome, that is disfigured by a scowl."