Nor was Mr. Mortimer himself of a commanding character, fit to capture that popular interest which his daughter’s quiet neatness had been unable to attach. Mr. Mortimer, son of the late Lord Roger, and heir-apparent to his uncle, must always, whatever his position, have been a nonentity, not only from his poverty, but from his silliness. Mr. Mortimer was strangely, unbelievably silly. He was merely silly. He was silly in the wrong way. He neither shocked people nor amused them. Even his daughter realized that he was silly, and felt no grievance with the world for ignoring him. The world had, at one time, done its best to encourage a coming Duke. But the long delay in the succession, coupled with Mr. Mortimer’s overwhelming foolishness, had gradually worn off the patience of even the most far-sighted; and now his daughter went about inconspicuously with her great-aunt, while her father stayed unregretted at home, and presumed on his prospects in a placid, most-comfortable-chair-assuming way. Gentle, neat, polite, Miss Mortimer, in her heart of hearts, resented the indifference with which the world seemed to treat the future mistress of Brakelond. And this resentment, demure and calm as it was, did not make her more attractive or approachable to the men from whom she would have liked to claim attention as her right. She stiffened herself into a rigid piety, and by contrast with the gay, attractive girls around her, made herself defiantly dull and godly in demeanour, pluming herself the while on her unfaltering maintenance of old-fashioned piety in degenerate days. And as soon as the men discovered that, in her way, she was mildly sulking at them for not making more of her, they ceased their efforts to make anything at all, and took refuge with the hundreds of other bright, pleasant girls who had twice Miss Mortimer’s charm and none of her prospects or pretensions.