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. 
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 had begun life with very high aspirations. At nineteen she had thought that all the world was before her. With her commanding figure, regular 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-three, 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.
But now she was aware that she had always fixed her price a little too high. On three things she was still determined: that she would not be poor, she would not be banished from London, and she would not be an old maid. 