could be fit for him? He had
now perceived that himself, and therefore had taken her at her word,
and had left her. Had he been more like other men around her;--more
homely, less prone to rise, with less about him of fire and genius,
she might have won him and kept him. The prize would not have been
so precious; but still, she thought, it might have been sufficient
for her heart. A young man who could find printers and publishers to
report his words in that way, on the first moment of his coming among
them, would he turn aside from his path to look after her? Would he
not bring with him some grand lady down from London as his wife?

"Dear me!" said Mrs. Ray, quite startled. "Oh, dear! What do you
think he says?"

"What does he say, mamma?"

"Well, I don't know. Perhaps he mayn't mean it. I don't think I ought
to have spoken of it."

"If it's in the newspaper I suppose I should have heard of it, unless
you sent it back without letting me see it."

"She said we were to keep it, and it's because of that, I'm sure. She
was always the most good-natured woman in the world. I don't know
what we should have done if we hadn't found such a neighbour as Mrs.
Sturt."

"But what is it, mamma, that you are speaking of in the newspapers?"

"Mr. Rowan says--Oh, dear! I wish I'd let you come to it yourself.
How very odd that he should get up and say that kind of thing in
public before all the people. He says;--but any way I know he means
it because he's so honest. And after all if he means it, it doesn't
much matter where he says it. Handsome is that handsome does. There,
my dear; I don't know how to tell it you, so you had better read it
yourself."

Rachel with eager hands took the paper, and began the speech as her
mother had done, and read it through. She read it through till she
came to those words, and then she put the paper down beside her. "I
understand what you mean, mamma, and what Mrs. Sturt meant; but Mr.
Rowan did not mean that."

"What did he mean, my dear?"

"He meant them to understand that he intended to become a man of
Baslehurst like one of themselves."

"But then why did he talk about finding a wife there?"

"He wouldn't have said that, mamma, if he had meant anything
particular. If anything of that sort had been at all in his mind, it
would have kept him from saying what he did say."

"But didn't he mean that he intended to marry a Baslehurst lady?"

"He meant it in that sort of way in which men do