he exercise of somewhat peremptory parental authority. Then he
informed me that he had been to Bowick, and had found his lady-love at
home, you and Mrs. Wortle having by chance been absent at the time. It
seems that he declared himself to the young lady, who, in the exercise of
a wise discretion, ran away from him and left him planted on the terrace.
That is his account of what passed, and I do not in the least doubt its
absolute truth. It is at any rate quite clear, from his own showing, that
the young lady gave him no encouragement.

"Such having been the case, I do not think that I should have found it
necessary to write to you at all had not Carstairs persevered with me till
I promised to do so. He was willing, he said, not to go to Bowick on
condition that I would write to you on the subject. The meaning of this
is, that had he not been very much in earnest, I should have considered it
best to let the matter pass on as such matters do, and be forgotten. But
he is very much in earnest. However foolish it is,--or perhaps I had
better say unusual,--that a lad should be in love before he is twenty, it
is, I suppose, possible. At any rate it seems to be the case with him,
and he has convinced his mother that it would be cruel to ignore the fact.

"I may at once say that, as far as you and your girl are concerned, I
should be quite satisfied that he should choose for himself such a
marriage. I value rank, at any rate, as much as it is worth; but that he
will have of his own, and does not need to strengthen it by intermarriage
with another house of peculiarly old lineage. As far as that is
concerned, I should be contented. As for money, I should not wish him to
think of it in marrying. If it comes, _tant mieux_. If not, he will have
enough of his own. I write to you, therefore, exactly as I should do if
you had happened to be a brother peer instead of a clergyman.

"But I think that long engagements are very dangerous; and you probably
will agree with me that they are likely to be more prejudicial to the girl
than to the man. It may be that, as difficulties arise in the course of
years, he can forget the affair, and that she cannot. He has many things
of which to think; whereas she, perhaps, has only that one. She may have
made that thing so vital to her that it cannot be got under and conquered;
whereas, without any fault or heartlessness on his part, occupation has
conquered it for him. In this case I