‘I should like to know,’ she said, ‘why you object so much to Mr. Douglas? he seems a very gentlemanly young man. Do you know something more of him than we know?’ ‘Nobody,’ said Mr. Mountford, with solemnity, ‘knows any more of the young man than we know.’ ‘Then why should you be so determined against him?’ persisted his wife. Mr. Mountford fixed his eyes severely upon her. ‘Letitia,’ he said, ‘there is one thing, above all others, that I object to in a man; it is when nobody knows anything about him. You will not deny that I have had some experience in life; some experience you must grant me, whatever my deficiencies may be; and the result of all I have observed is that a man whom nobody knows is not a person to connect yourself with. If he is a member of a well-known family--like our own, for instance--there are his people to answer for him. If, on the other hand, he has made himself of consequence in the world, that may answer the same purpose. But when a man is nobody, you have nothing to trust to; he may be a very good sort of person; there may be no harm in him; but the chances are against him. At all times the chances are heavily against a man whom nobody knows.’ Mr. Mountford was not disinclined to lay down the law, but he seldom did it on an abstract question; and his wife looked at him, murmuring ‘one, two, three’ with her lips, while her eyes expressed a certain mild surprise. The feeling, however, was scarcely so strong as surprise; it was rather with a sensation of unexpectedness that she listened. Surely nobody had a better right to his opinion: but she did not look for a general dogma when she had asked a particular question. ‘But,’ she said, ‘papa! he was known very well, I suppose, or they would not have had him there--to the Ashleys, at least.’ ‘What was known? Nothing about him--nothing whatever about him! as Anne was so absurd as to say they know _him_, or their own opinion of him; but they know nothing _about_ him--nobody knows anything about him. Whatever you may think, Letitia, that is quite enough for me.’ ‘Oh, my dear, I don’t pretend to understand; but we meet a great many people whom we don’t know anything of. In society we are meeting them for ever.’ ‘Pardon me,’ said Mr. Mountford, lifting an emphatic finger; ‘_we_ may know nothing about them, but somebody knows. Now, all I hear of this man is that he is nobody; he may be good or he may be bad, much more likely the latter; but, this being the case, if he were an angel I will have nothing to do with him; neither shall anyone belonging to me. We are well-known people ourselves, and we must form connections with well-known people--or none at all.’ ‘None at all; you would not keep her an old maid, papa?’