It is scarcely necessary to say, at this stage of the narration, that Miss Kitty Hood was "begging the question." She had never heard one word to indicate why Carlton Brand had not accepted his opportunities, and she merely mentioned the two as people of prominence in the section, acquaintances, and the first pair of lovers of whom she happened to think. But she had made a terrible blunder, as many of us do at the very moment when we seem to be performing the very keenest of operations. Carlton Brand--one of the finest-looking men to be found within a radius of an hundred miles, a member of one of the liberal professions, and known to be wealthy enough to afford indulgence in any line of life which he might happen to fancy--was naturally an object of envy if not of suspicion to hundreds of other young men who did not feel that they possessed quite the same advantages. Young farmers, who chanced to catch him saying a polite word to their sisters, looked at him through eyes not too confiding, in spite of the fact that not even rumor had pointed out a single instance in which he had indulged in a dishonorable amour; and those who detected him in glances of kindness (perhaps of admiration) towards demoiselles whom they had marked out as their own destined marital property, had a bad habit of even looking out of the corners of their eyes and scowling a little, at such manifestations. Carlton Brand, in all this, was only paying a very slight penalty for his triple advantage of wealth, position and good looks, while many others pay the same unpleasant toll to society for the possession of even one (and sometimes none) of the three favors of fortune.