, that enabled him to retire, as you see, to study politics, the
weather, and the art of conversation at his leisure. Mr. Bridmain, in
fact, quadragenarian bachelor as he was, felt extremely well pleased to
receive his sister in her widowhood, and to shine in the reflected light
of her beauty and title. Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician,
or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other. Mr. Bridmain
had put his neck under the yoke of his handsome sister, and though his
soul was a very little one--of the smallest description indeed--he would
not have ventured to call it his own. He might be slightly recalcitrant
now and then, as is the habit of long-eared pachyderms, under the thong
of the fair Countess's tongue; but there seemed little probability that
he would ever get his neck loose. Still, a bachelor's heart is an
outlying fortress that some fair enemy may any day take either by storm
or stratagem; and there was always the possibility that Mr. Bridmain's
first nuptials might occur before the Countess was quite sure of her
second. As it was, however, he submitted to all his sister's caprices,
never grumbled because her dress and her maid formed a considerable item
beyond her own little income of sixty pounds per annum, and consented to
lead with her a migratory life, as personages on the debatable ground
between aristocracy and commonalty, instead of settling in some spot
where his five hundred a-year might have won him the definite dignity of
a parochial magnate.

The Countess had her views in choosing a quiet provincial place like
Milby. After three years of widowhood, she had brought her feelings to
contemplate giving a successor to her lamented Czerlaski, whose fine
whiskers, fine air, and romantic fortunes had won her heart ten years
ago, when, as pretty Caroline Bridmain, in the full bloom of
five-and-twenty, she was governess to Lady Porter's daughters, whom he
initiated into the mysteries of the _pas de bas_, and the lancers'
quadrilles. She had had seven years of sufficiently happy matrimony with
Czerlaski, who had taken her to Paris and Germany, and introduced her
there to many of his old friends with large titles and small fortunes. So
that the fair Caroline had had considerable experience of life, and had
gathered therefrom, not, indeed, any very ripe and comprehensive wisdom,
but much external polish, and certain practical conclusions of a very
decided kind. One of these conclusions