year quite at her
own disposal, and she be not utterly vulgar in her manners, I would
advise you to marry her. I dare say she's to be had for the asking:
and as you are not going to marry her for love, it doesn't much
matter whether she is good-looking or not. As to your really marrying
a woman for love, I don't believe you are fool enough for that."

"Oh, Madeline!" exclaimed her sister.

"And oh, Charlotte!" said the other.

"You don't mean to say that no man can love a woman unless he be a
fool?"

"I mean very much the same thing--that any man who is willing to
sacrifice his interest to get possession of a pretty face is a fool.
Pretty faces are to be had cheaper than that. I hate your mawkish
sentimentality, Lotte. You know as well as I do in what way husbands
and wives generally live together; you know how far the warmth of
conjugal affection can withstand the trial of a bad dinner, of a
rainy day, or of the least privation which poverty brings with it;
you know what freedom a man claims for himself, what slavery he
would exact from his wife if he could! And you know also how wives
generally obey. Marriage means tyranny on one side and deceit on the
other. I say that a man is a fool to sacrifice his interests for
such a bargain. A woman, too generally, has no other way of living."

"But Bertie has no other way of living," said Charlotte.

"Then, in God's name, let him marry Mrs. Bold," said Madeline. And
so it was settled between them.

But let the gentle-hearted reader be under no apprehension
whatsoever. It is not destined that Eleanor shall marry Mr. Slope or
Bertie Stanhope. And here perhaps it may be allowed to the novelist
to explain his views on a very important point in the art of telling
tales. He ventures to reprobate that system which goes so far to
violate all proper confidence between the author and his readers by
maintaining nearly to the end of the third volume a mystery as to the
fate of their favourite personage. Nay, more, and worse than this, is
too frequently done. Have not often the profoundest efforts of genius
been used to baffle the aspirations of the reader, to raise false
hopes and false fears, and to give rise to expectations which are
never to be realized? Are not promises all but made of delightful
horrors, in lieu of which the writer produces nothing but most
commonplace realities in his final chapter? And is there not a species
of deceit in this to which the honesty of the pr