“I wonder whether he knows that I’m _the_ Miss Grunderson?” she thought, as she looked up at those romantic stars so familiar to her in her Byron. “Of course he does, though, ’Pa is _so_ different from the rest of society, that people always know there’s some reason for his being where he is, and they’re not very long guessing that the reason is money. Will anybody ever want to marry me for my own sake, I wonder? Ah, how I wish the Marquis of Westminster would fall in love with me! _He_ couldn’t want pa’s ground-rents.” Thus the maiden mused in her bower, while Roderick Lowther, encouraged by his junior, talked complacently of his conquest. “She’s the simplest little thing in Christendom,” he said; “simpler than--anybody I ever met in my life. The disinterested game is the dodge in that quarter, dear boy. Do you remember how Frederic Soulié’s _Lion_ treats the little shopkeeper’s daughter? First with the elegant devotion of a fashionable Romeo, then with the _brusquerie_ of a Benedick or a Petruchio. _Lise Laloine_ died under the treatment; but I don’t think the plump Rosa is made of quite such ethereal stuff. _La Petite_ is sentimental, and wants to be loved for herself alone; ‘O, wert thou in the cauld blast!’ ‘And long he mourned, the Lord of Burleigh;’ and that sort of thing. She shall have it, the darling innocent! Tennyson and Owen Meredith by the _kilo_, disinterested devotion by the bushel. But oh, my Harcourt, do not lure your loving brother into the quagmire of delusive wealth! Make sure that our simple-looking Grunderson does not hide the cloven hoof of insolvency under the golden fleece in which he drapes himself: those simple-looking men generally fail for half a million. I like your Mrs. Tredethlyn, by the bye; she is very pretty and very elegant; but, to be candid, my dear Harcourt--a brother ought to be candid, you know, even at the risk of being unpleasant--I fancy there is more in the husband than you imagine. A man with such a chest must have some solidity in his composition. If I am anything of a physiologist, it is not in that man’s organization to be made a fool of. Ah, I see you don’t care to talk about it; you like to keep your own secrets, and play your own game without backers or advisers. So be it. For myself, I am of an open disposition; I like to talk of my own affairs when they go smoothly, and to drop them when they take the crooked course. I don’t suppose Napoleon the First was very fond of talking about Waterloo. He forgot _that_ little skirmish, you may depend; and talked of Arcola and Lodi, the Pyramids, Austerlitz, Wagram, and Auerstadt. I dare say Mr. Merry holds his tongue about those two-thousand-guinea colts that _didn’t_ win the Derby. People are _not_ eloquent about their failures. I shall look up my old aunt early to-morrow morning; and after that, if you have any excuse for calling on Mrs. Tredethlyn, I shall be glad to accompany you. Unless I am very much at fault in feminine psychology,