fancy with ideal webs
Of innovation, but our life meanwhile
Is in the loom, where busy passion plies
The shuttle to and fro, and gives our deeds
The accustomed pattern.

Gwendolen's note, coming "pat betwixt too early and too late," was put
into Klesmer's hands just when he was leaving Quetcham, and in order to
meet her appeal to his kindness he, with some inconvenience to himself
spent the night at Wanchester. There were reasons why he would not
remain at Quetcham.

That magnificent mansion, fitted with regard to the greatest expense,
had in fact became too hot for him, its owners having, like some great
politicians, been astonished at an insurrection against the established
order of things, which we plain people after the event can perceive to
have been prepared under their very noses.

There were as usual many guests in the house, and among them one in
whom Miss Arrowpoint foresaw a new pretender to her hand: a political
man of good family who confidently expected a peerage, and felt on
public grounds that he required a larger fortune to support the title
properly. Heiresses vary, and persons interested in one of them
beforehand are prepared to find that she is too yellow or too red, tall
and toppling or short and square, violent and capricious or moony and
insipid; but in every case it is taken for granted that she will
consider herself an appendage to her fortune, and marry where others
think her fortunes ought to go. Nature, however, not only accommodates
herself ill to our favorite practices by making "only children"
daughters, but also now and then endows the misplaced daughter with a
clear head and a strong will. The Arrowpoints had already felt some
anxiety owing to these endowments of their Catherine. She would not
accept the view of her social duty which required her to marry a needy
nobleman or a commoner on the ladder toward nobility; and they were not
without uneasiness concerning her persistence in declining suitable
offers. As to the possibility of her being in love with Klesmer they
were not at all uneasy--a very common sort of blindness. For in general
mortals have a great power of being astonished at the presence of an
effect toward which they have done everything, and at the absence of an
effect toward which they had done nothing but desire it. Parents are
astonished at the ignorance of their sons, though they have used the
most time-honored and expensive means of securing it; husbands