If he stood up, at any rate, the most pressing of his four patrons not only did that but struck him through it all as fairly spinning round with excess of balance--so at least poor Ralph felt on hearing it expressed as relevant that there was his handsome mistress, the finest young woman in England, for such were Sir Cantopher's terms, in whom, despite her thousand charms, no spark of the noble interest they referred to could possibly be kindled. "I don't complain of that," Sir Cantopher promptly added, "for she's a perfectly honest creature, with the very highest spirit and no shade of affectation, and in fact so rare a piece in herself that who can ask for more? You don't of course, sir, and I don't advise you to!"--Sir Cantopher's jerk of these last words was on an especially high note; "but there is a person in the family, if you don't happen to know it, from whom you may expect anything in life on the ground of taste; so long, of course I mean, as you don't propose yourself--as a mere brother-in-law to be--for the object of it. She has the most perfect understanding in the world," the speaker lucidly pursued, "in addition to being formed otherwise very sufficiently to please, and I'm such a fancier of every mode of the exquisite that I should delight in finding her young mind open to me if she didn't insist on keeping it perfectly closed. This is to show Mr. Pendrel"--he now addressed himself to Mrs. Midmore--"that I speak without prejudice, that I'm the most patient creature in the world, that I know when I'm beaten, and that I'm hoping for better luck!" "Luck with sweet Nan is what I'm to understand?" Ralph had broken out, at the touch of this spring, before he could think twice, and very much in fact as if at last fairly dizzied by a succession of perspectives. It seemed to add an instant's brightness to Sir Cantopher's hard little eyes, but Mrs. Midmore forestalled him. "Our cousin likes to name her so, though he complains of never having heard of her. You're making that up!" she said rather grandly to Ralph. "Oh I seem to know all about her now," he more easily laughed, "and many of your names do strike me as differing from ours and as having a kind of charm." He was determined indeed to be easy at any cost. "I'm ever so taken with Sir Cantopher's--we've nothing at home like that," he instanced with a smile that covered the liberty taken, if liberty it should appear. "Do you find it so much better than your own?" Molly inquired on this, in her outright way and as with a hint at impatience of many things.