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...