"Your brother has been asking if he maybe engaged to Nora——"
"If he may marry her out of hand, you mean. That's what he wants to do."
"We know very little of him," said Janetta, rather unsteadily, "or of you. Things have been said against you in Beaminster—you have yourself told me things that I did not like—indeed, my father almost warned me against you——"
A murmur from Wyvis Brand sounded uncommonly like "the devil he did!"—but Janetta did not stop to listen.
"I never heard anything but vague generalities against him, but then I never heard anything particularly good. I don't like the way in which he has pursued his acquaintance with Nora. I have no authority with her—not much influence with her mother—and, therefore, I throw myself on you for help," said Janetta, her musical voice taking a pathetically earnest cadence; "and I ask you to beg your brother to wait—to let Nora grow older and know her own mind a little better—to give us the chance of knowing him before he asks to take her away."
"You have not said either of the things that I was expecting to hear," said Wyvis.
"What were those?"
"How much money he had a year!"
"Oh, he told me about that."
"Or—an allusion to his forbears: his father's character and his mother's relations—the two bugbears of Beaminster."