the privilege of his
rank,--this was Edgar Harrowby as the world saw and his friends knew
him, and as North Aston had henceforth to know him.

His return caused immense local excitement and great rejoicing. It
seemed to set the social barometer at "fair," and to promise a spell
of animation such as North Aston had been long wanting. And indeed
personally for himself it was time that Major Harrowby was at home and
at the head of his own affairs. Matters had been going rather badly on
the estate without him, and the need of a strong hand to keep agents
straight and tenants up to the mark had been making itself somewhat
disastrously felt during the last three or four years. Wherefore
he had sold out, broken all his ties in India handsomely, as he had
broken them in London handsomely once before, when, mad with jealousy,
he had fled like a thief in the night, burned his boats behind him,
and, as he thought, obliterated every trace by which that loved and
graceless woman could discover his real name or family holding; and
now had come home prepared to do his duty to society and himself. That
is, prepared to marry a nice girl of his own kind, keep the estate
well in hand, and set an example of respectability and orthodoxy,
family prayers and bold riding, according to the ideal of the English
country gentleman.

But, above all, he must marry. And the wife provided for him by the
eternal fitness of things was Adelaide Birkett. Who else could be
found to suit the part so perfectly? She was well-born, well-mannered;
though not coarsely robust, yet healthy in the sense of purity
of blood; and she was decidedly pretty. So far to the good of the
Harrowby stock in the future. Neither was she too young, though by
reason of her quiet country life her twenty-four years did not count
more to her in wear and tear of feeling and the doubtful moulding of
experience than if she had lived through one London season. She was a
girl of acknowledged good sense, calm, equable, holding herself in the
strictest leash of ladylike reserve, and governing all her emotions
without trouble, patent or unconfessed. Hers was a character which
would never floreate into irregular beauties to give her friends
anxiety and crowd her life with embarrassing consequences. She
despised sentiment and ridiculed enthusiasm, thought skepticism both
wicked and disreputable, but at the same time fanaticism was silly,
and not nearly so respectable as that quiet, easy-goin