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396 great a stain upon her, why had he brought her into his house among his children?

'It is a misfortune, Frank; a very great misfortune. It will not do for you and me to ignore birth; too much of the value of one's position depends upon it.'

'But what was Mr. Moffat's birth?' said Frank, almost with scorn; 'or what Miss Dunstable's?' he would have added, had it not been that his father had not been concerned in that sin of wedding him to the oil of Lebanon.

'True, Frank. But yet, what you would mean to say is not true. We must take the world as we find it. Were you to marry a rich heiress, were her birth even as low as that of poor Mary—'

'Don't call her poor Mary, father; she is not poor. My wife will have a right to take rank in the world, however she was born.'

'Well,—poor in that way. But were she an heiress, the world would forgive her birth on account of her wealth.'

'The world is very complaisant, sir.'

'You must take it as you find it, Frank. I only say that such is the fact. If Porlock were to marry the daughter of a shoe-black, without a farthing, he would make a mésalliance; but if the daughter of the shoe-black had half a million of money, nobody would dream of saying so. I am stating no opinion of my own: I am only giving you the world's opinion.'

'I don't care a straw for the world.'

'That is a mistake, my boy; you do care for it, and would be very foolish if you did not. What you mean is, that, on this particular point, you value your love more than the world's opinion.'

'Well, yes, that is what I mean.'

But the squire, though he had been very lucid in his definition, had got no nearer to his object; had not even yet ascertained what his own object was. This marriage would be ruinous to Greshamsbury; and yet, what was he to say against it, seeing that the ruin had been his fault, and not his son's?

'You could let me have a farm; could you not, sir? I was thinking of about six or seven hundred acres. I suppose it could be managed somehow?'

'A farm?' said the father, abstractedly.

'Yes, sir. I must do something for my living. I should make less of a mess of that than of anything else. Besides, it would take such a time to be an attorney, or a doctor, or anything of that sort.'

Do something for his living! And was the heir of