"I forget nothing, my dear girl. But there is no parallel between your case and mine. For a man, age is nothing--for a woman, everything; and I regret to be obliged to remember that you are approaching your thirtieth birthday. Fortunately, you don't look more than seven-and-twenty; and I really think, if you play your cards well, you may secure this country rector. A country rector is not much for a woman who has set her cap at a duke, but he is better than nothing; and as the case is really growing rather desperate, you must play your cards with unusual discrimination this time, Lydia. You must, upon my word." "I am tired of playing my cards," answered Miss Graham, contemptuously. "It seems as if life was always to be a losing game for me, let me play my cards how I will. I begin to think there is a curse upon me, and that no act of mine will ever prosper. Who was that man, in your Greek play, who guessed some inane conundrum, and was always getting into trouble afterwards? I begin to think there really is a fatality in these things." She turned away from her brother impatiently, and seated herself at her piano. She played a few bars of a waltz with a listless air, while the captain lighted a cigar, and stepped out upon the little balcony, overhanging the dull, foggy street. The brother and sister occupied lodgings in one of the narrow streets of Mayfair. The apartments were small, shabbily furnished, inconvenient, and expensive; but the situation was irreproachable, and the haughty Lydia could only exist in an irreproachable situation. Captain Graham finished his cigar, and went out to his club, leaving his sister alone, discontented, gloomy, sullen, to get through the day as best she might. The time had been when the prospect of a visit to Hallgrove Rectory would have seemed very pleasant to her. But that time was gone. The haughty spirit was soured by disappointment, the selfish nature embittered by defeat. There was a glass over the mantel-piece. Lydia leaned her arms upon the marble slab, and contemplated the dark face in the mirror. It was a handsome face: but a cloud of sullen pride obscured its beauty. "I shall never prosper," she said, as she looked at herself. "There is some mysterious ban upon me, and on my beauty. All my life I have been passed by for the sake of women in every attribute my inferiors. If I was unloved in the freshness of my youth and beauty, how can I expect to be loved now, when youth is past and beauty is on the wane? And yet my brother expects me to go through the old stage-play, in the futile hope of winning a rich husband!"