ured not
alone money, but fame, station, and influence? Mr. Hankes was a widower;
his own experience of married life had not been fortunate. The late Mrs.
Hankes was a genius, and had the infirmities of that unsocial class; she
despised her husband, quarrelled with him, lampooned him in a book,
and ran off with the editor of a small weekly review that eulogized her
novel. It was supposed she died in Australia,--at least, she never
came back again; and as the first lieutenant gravely confirms the sun's
altitude when he mutters, "Make it noon," so Mr. Hankes, by as simple
a fiat, said, "Make her dead," and none disputed him. At all events, he
was a widower by brevet, and eligible to be gazetted a husband at any
moment.

Miss Kellett possessed many personal attractions, nor was he altogether
insensible to them; but he regarded them, after all, pretty much as
the intended purchaser of an estate might have regarded an ornamental
fish-pond or a flower-garden on the property,--something, in short,
which increased the attraction, but never augmented the value. He was
glad they were there, though they by no means would have decided him to
the purchase. He knew, besides, that the world set a high price on these
things, and he was not sorry to possess what represented value of any
kind. It was always scrip, shares, securities, even, although one could
not well say how, when, or where the dividend was to be paid.

There was another consideration, too, weighed materially with him. The
next best thing, in Mr. Hankes's estimation, to marrying into a good
connection, was to have none at all,--no brothers, no sisters-in-law,
no cousins-german or otherwise, no uncles, aunts, or any good friends of
parental degree. Now, except a brother in the Crimea,--with an excellent
chance of being killed,--Sybella had none belonging to her. In the happy
phrase of advertisements, she had no encumbrances. There was no one to
insist upon this or that settlement; none to stipulate for anything
in her favor; and these were, to his thinking, vast advantages. Out of
these various considerations our reader is now to fashion some of the
reasons which induced Mr. Hankes to undertake an excursion alike foreign
to his taste and uncongenial to his habits; but as a placeman would not
decline the disagreeables of a sea-voyage as the preliminary to reaching
the colony he was to govern, so this gentleman consoled himself by
thinking that it was the sole penalty atta