For, of course, so clever and so managing a woman as Mrs. Miller has not
allowed her daughter to grow up to the age of twenty without making the
most careful and judiciously-laid schemes for her ultimate disposal. That
Beatrice is to marry is a matter of course, and Mrs. Miller has well
determined that the marriage is to be a good one, and that her daughter
is to strengthen her father's position in Meadowshire by a union with one
or other of its leading families. Now, when Mrs. Miller came to pass the
marriageable men of Meadowshire under review, there was no such eligible
bachelor amongst them all as Sir John Kynaston, of Kynaston Hall.

It was on him, therefore, that her hopes with regard to Beatrice were
fixed. Fortune hitherto had seemed to smile favourably upon her. Beatrice
had had one season in town, during which she had met Sir John frequently,
and he had, contrary to his usual custom, asked her to dance several
times when he had met her at balls. Mrs. Miller said to herself that Sir
John, not being a very young man, did not set much store upon mere
personal beauty; that he probably valued mental qualities in a woman more
highly than the transient glitter of beauty; and that Beatrice's good
sense and sharp, shrewd conversation had evidently made a favourable
impression upon him.

She never was more mistaken in her life. True, Sir John did like Miss
Miller, he found her unconventional and amusing; but his only object in
distinguishing her by his attentions had been to pay a necessary
compliment to the new M.P.'s daughter, a duty which he would have
fulfilled equally had she been stupid as well as plain: moreover, as we
have seen, few men were so intensely sensitive to beauty in a woman as
was Sir John Kynaston. Mrs. Miller, however, was full of hopes concerning
him. To do her justice, she was not exactly vulgarly ambitious for her
daughter; she liked Sir John personally, and had a high respect for his
character, and she considered that Beatrice's high spirit and self-willed
disposition would be most desirably moderated and kept in check by a
husband so much older than herself. Lady Kynaston, moreover, was one of
her best and dearest friends, and was her beau-ideal of all that a clever
and refined lady should be. The match, in every respect, would have been
a very acceptable one to her. Whether or no Miss Beatrice shared her
mother's views on her behalf remains to be seen.

The mother and daughter are settlin