That Mr Brehgert was a fat, greasy man of fifty, conspicuous for hair-dye, was in itself distressing:--but this minor distress was swallowed up in the greater. Miss Longestaffe was a girl possessing considerable discrimination, and was able to weigh her own possessions in just scales. She had begun life with very high aspirations, believing in her own beauty, in her mother's fashion, and her father's fortune. She had now been ten years at the work, and was aware that she had always flown a little too high for her mark at the time. At nineteen and twenty and twenty-one she had thought that all the world was before her. With her commanding figure, regular long features, and bright complexion, she had regarded herself as one of the beauties of the day, and had considered herself entitled to demand wealth and a Coronet. At twenty-two, twenty-three, and twenty-four any young peer, or peer's eldest son, with a house in town and in the country, might have sufficed. Twenty-five and six had been the years for baronets and squires; and even a leading fashionable lawyer or two had been marked by her as sufficient since that time. But now she was aware that hitherto she had always fixed her price a little too high. On three things she was still determined,--that she would not be poor, that she would not be banished from London, and that she would not be an old maid. 'Mamma,' she had often said, 'there's one thing certain. I shall never do to be poor.' Lady Pomona had expressed full concurrence with her child. 'And, mamma, to do as Sophia is doing would kill me. Fancy having to live at Toodlam all one's life with George Whitstable!' Lady Pomona had agreed to this also, though she thought that Toodlam Hall was a very nice home for her elder daughter. 'And, mamma, I should drive you and papa mad if I were to stay at home always. And what would become of me when Dolly was master of everything?' Lady Pomona, looking forward as well as she was able to the time at which she should herself have departed, when her dower and dower-house would have reverted to Dolly, acknowledged that Georgiana should provide herself with a home of her own before that time.
And how was this to be done? Lovers with all the glories and all the graces are supposed to be plentiful as blackberries by girls of nineteen, but have been proved to be rare hothouse fruits by girls of twenty-nine. Brehgert was rich, would live in London, and would be a husband. People did such odd things now and 'lived them down,' that she could see no reason why she should not do this and live this down. Courage was the one thing necessary,--that and perseverance. She must teach herself to talk about Brehgert as Lady Monogram did of Sir Damask. She had plucked up so much courage as had enabled her to declare her fate to her old friend,--remembering as she did so how in days long past she and her friend Julia Triplex had scattered their scorn upon some poor girl who had married a man with a Jewish name,-- whose grandfather had possibly been a Jew. 'Dear me,' said Lady Monogram. 'Todd, Brehgert, and Goldsheiner! Mr Todd is--one of us, I suppose.'