d to marry when he could afford it; and once he
had been in love, violently in love, but had laid the passion aside, and
told it to wait till a more convenient season. This was, of course, the
proper thing to do, and prudence should have been rewarded. But when,
after the lapse of fifteen years, he went, as it were, to his spiritual
larder and took down Love from the top shelf to offer him to Mrs. Orr,
he was rather dismayed. Something had happened. Perhaps the god had
flown; perhaps he had been eaten by the rats. At all events, he was not
there.

Mr. Pembroke was conscientious and romantic, and knew that marriage
without love is intolerable. On the other hand, he could not admit
that love had vanished from him. To admit this, would argue that he had
deteriorated.

Whereas he knew for a fact that he had improved, year by year. Each year
be grew more moral, more efficient, more learned, more genial. So how
could he fail to be more loving? He did not speak to himself as follows,
because he never spoke to himself; but the following notions moved in
the recesses of his mind: "It is not the fire of youth. But I am not
sure that I approve of the fire of youth. Look at my sister! Once she
has suffered, twice she has been most imprudent, and put me to great
inconvenience besides, for if she was stopping with me she would have
done the housekeeping. I rather suspect that it is a nobler, riper
emotion that I am laying at the feet of Mrs. Orr." It never took him
long to get muddled, or to reverse cause and effect. In a short time he
believed that he had been pining for years, and only waiting for this
good fortune to ask the lady to share it with him.

Mrs. Orr was quiet, clever, kindly, capable, and amusing and they were
old acquaintances. Altogether it was not surprising that he should ask
her to be his wife, nor very surprising that she should refuse. But
she refused with a violence that alarmed them both. He left her house
declaring that he had been insulted, and she, as soon as he left, passed
from disgust into tears.

He was much annoyed. There was a certain Miss Herriton who, though far
inferior to Mrs. Orr, would have done instead of her. But now it was
impossible. He could not go offering himself about Sawston. Having
engaged a matron who had the reputation for being bright and motherly,
he moved into Dunwood House and opened the Michaelmas term. Everything
went wrong. The cook left; the boys had a disease called rose