XLVIII. How They Were All Married, Had Two Children,
and Lived Happy Ever After

CHAPTER I

"Omnes Omnia Bona Dicere"

When young Mark Robarts was leaving college, his father might well
declare that all men began to say all good things to him, and to
extol his fortune in that he had a son blessed with so excellent a
disposition. This father was a physician living at Exeter. He was a
gentleman possessed of no private means, but enjoying a lucrative
practice, which had enabled him to maintain and educate a family with
all the advantages which money can give in this country. Mark was
his eldest son and second child; and the first page or two of this
narrative must be consumed in giving a catalogue of the good things
which chance and conduct together had heaped upon this young man's
head.

His first step forward in life had arisen from his having been
sent, while still very young, as a private pupil to the house of a
clergyman, who was an old friend and intimate friend of his father's.
This clergyman had one other, and only one other, pupil--the young
Lord Lufton; and between the two boys, there had sprung up a close
alliance. While they were both so placed, Lady Lufton had visited
her son, and then invited young Robarts to pass his next holidays at
Framley Court. This visit was made; and it ended in Mark going back
to Exeter with a letter full of praise from the widowed peeress. She
had been delighted, she said, in having such a companion for her son,
and expressed a hope that the boys might remain together during the
course of their education. Dr. Robarts was a man who thought much of
the breath of peers and peeresses, and was by no means inclined to
throw away any advantage which might arise to his child from such a
friendship. When, therefore, the young lord was sent to Harrow, Mark
Robarts went there also.

That the lord and his friend often quarrelled, and occasionally
fought,--the fact even that for one period of three months they never
spoke to each other--by no means interfered with the doctor's hopes.
Mark again and again stayed a fortnight at Framley Court, and Lady
Lufton always wrote about him in the highest terms. And then the lads
went together to Oxford, and here Mark's good fortune followed him,
consisting rather in the highly respectable manner in which he lived,
than in any wonderful career of collegiate success. His family was
proud of him, and the doctor was always read