To the maternal eye, a singular, problematic being, anything but likely to inspire confidence.

Yet he talked agreeably, if oddly; his incomplete sentences were full of good feeling; above all, he evidently meant to be frank, put his poverty in the baldest aspect, set forth his hopes with extreme moderation.

"We seem to suit each other," was his quiet remark, with a glance at Olga; and Mrs.Hannaford could not doubt that he meant well.
But what a match! Scarcely had he gone, when the mother began her dissuasions, and from that moment there was misery.
For Olga, Mrs.Hannaford had always been ambitious.

The girl was clever, warm-hearted, and in her way handsome.

But for the disastrous father, she would have had every chance of marrying "well." Mrs.
Hannaford was not a worldly woman, and all her secret inclinations were to romance, but it is hard for a mother to dissociate the thought of marriage from that of wealth and respectability.