“You might put up with me perhaps, though I am much too old for you. But my half brother! You have met him, and snubbed him, I think, because he is always raving about your beauty and spirit. But if so, you certainly do not want to meet him again.”
“Indeed I don’t,” answered the girl, laughing.
“We might perhaps find a common meeting ground at the Vicarage after next week, when the vicar comes back. But I don’t know how you will like Mrs. Brander,” she added, very dubiously.
“Isn’t she nice?” asked Olivia, with great interest.
“Oh, yes, she’s very nice, and very handsome, and—and straightforward, and—and looked up to. She quite leads the fashions here, you know, and starts every thing. She is not at all like the ordinary humdrum vicar’s wife. But——”
“Well?”
“I don’t want to talk scandal, but you must hear all the standing gossip, and you may as well hear it without venom. People talk about her and her husband’s brother——”
“Mr. Vernon Brander?”
“Yes.”
“He told me himself he had been in love with her before she married,” said Olivia, warmly.