er up, as a
kindness to their younger sons; briefless barristers, with visions of
the Woolsack, besought her to help them to the first step--a seat in
the House; clergymen with great views prayed her to join them in some
stupendous charitable work, that must win for them the lawn-sleeves;
more than one impecunious soldier pleaded with her for their tailors,
whose bills without her help they were quite unable to pay. She seemed
a common prey, fair game for every hand. This developed in her an
undue amount of suspicion and a certain hardness of heart. She began
to doubt whether there was one disinterested man in the whole world.

But before many years had passed she realised that unless she married
there could be no prospect of peace. Already she had quarrelled with a
dozen companions of her own sex; she wished now to try one of the
other. But men seemed tired of proposing to her. She had the character
of being as hard and cold as iron; and no one cared to run his head
against a wall. If she wanted a husband now the proposal must come
from her. Miss Purling in her heart rather liked the notion; it gave
her a chance of posing like a queen in search of a consort, and years
of independence had made her very queenlike and despotic indeed. So
much so, that the only man to suit her must be a mere cipher without a
will of his own; and he was difficult to find. Men of the kind are not
plentiful unless they plainly perceive substantial advantage from
assuming the part. But few guessed what kind of man would exactly
suit Isabel Purling, so there were few pretenders.

Among those who flocked to her _soirees_--she was fond of entertaining
in spite of her disabilities as a single woman--was a meek little
professor, who lodged in Camden Town, and who came afoot in roomy
goloshes, which now and again, in a fit of abstraction, he carried
upstairs and laid upon the tea-table or at his hostess's feet, as
though the carpet was damp and he feared she might run the risk of
catarrh. He was reputed to be extremely erudite, a ripe scholar, and
of some fame in scientific research. But of all his discoveries--and
he had made many under the microscope and in space--the most
surprising was the discovery that a lady who owned a deer-park and
many thousands a-year desired him to make her his wife. But he was an
obliging little man, always ready to do a kind thing for anybody; and
he obliged Miss Purling in the way she wished--after all, at some cost