ves. The
sight of an ummarried woman afflicted me, and yet when my male friends
changed their state I took it as a personal offence. He let me know that
so far as he was concerned I must prepare myself for this injury, for
he had given his father his word that another twelvemonth should not see
him a bachelor. The old man had given him _carte blanche_; he made no
condition beyond exacting that the lady should have youth and health.
Ambrose Tester, at any rate, had taken a vow and now he was going
seriously to look about him. I said to him that what must be must be,
and that there were plenty of charming girls about the land, among
whom he could suit himself easily enough. There was no better match in
England, I said, and he would only have to make his choice. That however
is not what I thought, for my real reflections were summed up in the
silent exclamation, "What a pity Lady Vandeleur isn't a widow!" I hadn't
the smallest doubt that if she were he would marry her on the spot; and
after he had gone I wondered considerably what _she_ thought of this
turn in his affairs. If it was disappointing to me, how little it must
be to _her_ taste! Sir Edmund had not been so much out of the way
in fearing there might be obstacles to his son's taking the step he
desired. Margaret Vandeleur was an obstacle. I knew it as well as if Mr.
Tester had told me.

I don't mean there was anything in their relation he might not freely
have alluded to, for Lady Vandeleur, in spite of her beauty and
her tiresome husband, was not a woman who could be accused of an
indiscretion. Her husband was a pedant about trifles,--the shape of his
hatbrim, the _pose_ of his coachman, and cared for nothing else; but
she was as nearly a saint as one may be when one has rubbed shoulders
for ten years with the best society in Europe. It is a characteristic
of that society that even its saints are suspected, and I go too far
in saying that little pinpricks were not administered, in considerable
numbers to her reputation. But she did n't feel them, for still
more than Ambrose Tester she was a person to whose happiness a good
conscience was necessary. I should almost say that for her happiness it
was sufficient, and, at any rate, it was only those who didn't know
her that pretended to speak of her lightly. If one had the honor of her
acquaintance one might have thought her rather shut up to her beauty
and her grandeur, but one could n't but feel there was something