ing at present unchosen, should be thought of
by more than one person with a sympathetic interest as a woman sure to
be well provided for.

Some readers of this history will doubtless regard it as incredible
that people should construct matrimonial prospects on the mere report
that a bachelor of good fortune and possibilities was coming within
reach, and will reject the statement as a mere outflow of gall: they
will aver that neither they nor their first cousins have minds so
unbridled; and that in fact this is not human nature, which would know
that such speculations might turn out to be fallacious, and would
therefore not entertain them. But, let it be observed, nothing is here
narrated of human nature generally: the history in its present stage
concerns only a few people in a corner of Wessex--whose reputation,
however, was unimpeached, and who, I am in the proud position of being
able to state, were all on visiting terms with persons of rank.

There were the Arrowpoints, for example, in their beautiful place at
Quetcham: no one could attribute sordid views in relation to their
daughter's marriage to parents who could leave her at least half a
million; but having affectionate anxieties about their Catherine's
position (she having resolutely refused Lord Slogan, an unexceptionable
Irish peer, whose estate wanted nothing but drainage and population),
they wondered, perhaps from something more than a charitable impulse,
whether Mr. Grandcourt was good-looking, of sound constitution,
virtuous, or at least reformed, and if liberal-conservative, not too
liberal-conservative; and without wishing anybody to die, thought his
succession to the title an event to be desired.

If the Arrowpoints had such ruminations, it is the less surprising that
they were stimulated in Mr. Gascoigne, who for being a clergyman was
not the less subject to the anxieties of a parent and guardian; and we
have seen how both he and Mrs. Gascoigne might by this time have come
to feel that he was overcharged with the management of young creatures
who were hardly to be held in with bit or bridle, or any sort of
metaphor that would stand for judicious advice.

Naturally, people did not tell each other all they felt and thought
about young Grandcourt's advent: on no subject is this openness found
prudently practicable--not even on the generation of acids, or the
destination of the fixed stars: for either your contemporary with a
mind turned toward the