“Yes,” said Jack, in his ignorance, “she is a homely sort of sensible woman, that never could have been any thing beyond what she is; and one look at her would prove that to you. I don’t mean to say I like people that have seen better days; but you would never suppose she had been any thing more than what she is now; she might have been a Masterton shopkeeper’s daughter from Chestergate or Dove Street,” Jack continued, “and she would have looked just as she looks now.” Mr. Brownlow, in spite of himself, gave a long shuddering sigh. He drew a step apart from his son, and stumbled over a stone in the gravel, not having the heart even to kick it away. Jack’s words, though they were so careless and so ignorant, went to his father’s heart. As it happened, by some curious coincidence, he had chosen the very locality from which Phœbe Thomson would have come. And it rang into the very centre of that unsuspected target which Mr. Brownlow had set up to receive chance shots, in his heart. “I don’t know where she has come from,” he said; “but yet I tell you Powys is different; and some day you will know better. But whatever may be done about that has nothing to do with your own case. I repeat to you, Jack, it is very humbling to me.” Here he stopped short, and Jack was doggedly silent, and had not a word of sympathy to give him. It was true, this second _mésalliance_ was a great blow to Mr. Brownlow--a greater blow to his pride and sense of family importance than any body would have supposed. He had made up his mind to it that Sara must marry Powys; that her grandeur and her pretty state could only be secured to her by these means, and that she must pay the price for them--a price which, fortunately, she did not seem to have any great difficulty about. But that Jack should make an ignoble marriage too, that people could be able to say that the attorney’s children had gone back to their natural grade, and that all his wealth, and their admittance into higher circles, and Jack’s education, and Sara’s sovereignty, should end in their marrying, the one her father’s clerk, the other the little girl in the cottage at the gate, was a very bitter pill to their father. He had never schemed for great marriages for them, never attempted to bring heirs and heiresses under their notice; but still it was a downfall. Even the Brownlows of Masterton had made very different alliances. It was perhaps a curious sort of thing to strike a man, and a man of business, but nevertheless it was very hard upon him. In Sara’s case--if it did come to any thing in Sara’s case--there was an evident necessity, and there was an equivalent; yet even there Mr. Brownlow knew that when the time came to avow the arrangement, it would not be a pleasant office. He knew how people would open their eyes, how the thing would be spoken of, how his motives and _her_ motives would be questioned. And to think of Jack adding another story to the wonder of the county! Mr.