"Don't be unkind to little Freddie's aunt, even if she does make up ladies' own materials and wear glasses. All people have not their fate in their own hands."
"Pooh!" cried Ray scornfully, as he disappeared.
Bramwell got up and began pacing the room. Of old he used to sit and brood over the past, when he could no longer busy himself with his papers and books. This evening he walked up and down and thought of the future.
"Now that I recall the girl to my mind, Miss Layard is very beautiful. I do wish Philip would get married. That would get all this murderous vengeance out of his head. A single man may be willing to risk his own neck to avenge a wrong; but a man with a wife whom he loved would think twice before handing himself over to the hangman, and leaving the woman he loved desolate.
"I do hope he will fall in love with this girl. I know his present contempt for the sex, and I know the source from which that contempt springs. But all women are not alike. I have known only my mother and my sister and another, and out of the three, two are the salt of the earth and the glory of Heaven. A good woman is life's best gift, and there are a thousand good women for the one bad. It was my misfortune to--But let me not think of that.
"I know Philip would scout the idea of falling in love and marrying. Two facts now keep him from any chance of love or marriage. First, his revulsion from the whole sex because of the fault of one; and, second, because he does not meet any young girl who might convert him to particular exemption from his general scorn.
"And yet, although I have had little opportunity of judging, for I saw this girl only twice, perhaps she is not exactly the kind of wife that would be best for him. She is bright and gay, and beautiful enough, in all conscience. What a brilliant picture she made at that window! I seem to see her now more distinctly than I did at the time. There is such a thing as the collodion of the eye. And now that I think of the day, of the time she brought down the little fellow to the brink of the bay and handed him to me, how charming she looked! There was such colour in her face and hair, and such light in her eyes, and her voice is so clear and sympathetic! Ah, there are many, many, many good women in the world who are beautiful, supremely beautiful also, and she, I am sure, is one of them!
"But I fancy the wife for Philip ought to be more sedate. He is too excitable, and this Miss Layard is bright and quick. His excitement almost invariably takes a gloomy turn; hers, I should fancy, a gay direction. They would be fire and tow to one another. He ought to marry a woman of calm and sober mind, and she a man of sad and melancholy disposition like----"
He did not finish the sentence, even in his mind. He had almost said "like me."
"No, I don't think she would be the wife for him. But there! How calmly and solemnly I am disposing of the fate of two people! I had better do that thing which our race are so noted for doing well--mind my own business."