of Queningford are not cultivated to that delicate pitch when
flirtation becomes a decorative art, and Aggie would have esteemed it
vulgar. But Aggie was very superior and fastidious. She wanted things that
no young man in Queningford would ever be able to offer her. Aggie had
longings for music, better than Queningford's best, for beautiful
pictures, and for poetry. She had come across these things at school. And
now, at five-and-twenty, she couldn't procure one of them for herself. The
arts were not encouraged by her family, and she only had an "allowance" on
condition that she would spend it honorably in clothes. Of course, at
five-and-twenty, she knew all the "pieces" and songs that her friends
knew, and they knew all hers. She had read all the romantic fiction in the
lending library, and all the works of light popular science, and still
lighter and more popular theology, besides borrowing all the readable
books from the vicarage. She had exhausted Queningford. It had no more to
give her.

Queningford would have considered that a young lady who could do all that
had done enough to prove her possession of brains. Not that Queningford
had ever wanted her to prove it; its young men, at any rate, very much
preferred that she should leave her brains and theirs alone. And Aggie had
brains enough to be aware of this; and being a very well-behaved young
lady, and anxious to please, she had never mentioned any of her small
achievements. Nature, safeguarding her own interests, had whispered to
Aggie that young ladies who live in Queningford are better without
intellects that show.

Now, John Hurst was sadly akin to the young men of Queningford, in that he
was unable to offer her any of the things which, Aggie felt, belonged to
the finer part of her that she dared not show. On the other hand, he could
give her (beside himself), a good income, a good house, a horse to ride,
and a trap to drive in. To marry him, as her mother pointed out to her,
would be almost as good as "getting in with the county." Not that Mrs.
Purcell offered this as an inducement. She merely threw it out as a vague
contribution to the subject. Aggie didn't care a rap about the county, as
her mother might have known; but, though she wouldn't have owned it, she
had been attracted by John's personal appearance. Glancing out of the
parlor window, she could see what a gentleman he looked as he crossed the
market-place in his tweed suit, cloth cap, and leather g