en most of the
propensities of his youth. He had been born an only son of rich parents,
who shrank from exposing him to the rigours and temptations of a public
school. Consequently, when the time came for him to go up to Oxford,
he had found no friends there and had made few, being sensitive, shy,
entirely unskilled in games, and but moderately interested in learning.
His vacations, which he spent at home, were as dull as he had always found
them under a succession of well-meaning, middle-aged tutors--until, one
August day, as he played a twelve-pound salmon, he glanced up at the
farther bank and into a pair of brown eyes which were watching him with
unconcealed interest.

The eyes belonged to a yeoman-farmer's daughter: and young Molesworth lost
his fish, but returned next day, and again day after day, to try for him.
At the end of three weeks or so, his parents--he was a poor hand at
dissimulation--discovered what was happening, and interfered with
promptness and resolution. He had not learnt the art of disobedience, and
while he considered how to begin (having, indeed, taken his passion with a
thoroughness that did him credit), Miss Margaret, sorely weeping, was
packed off on a visit to her mother's relations near Exeter, where, three
months later, she married a young farmer-cousin and emigrated to Canada.

In this way Mr. Molesworth's love-making and his fly-fishing had come to
an end together. Like Gibbon, he had sighed as a lover, and (Miss
Margaret's faithlessness assisting) obeyed as a son. Nevertheless, the
sequel did not quite fulfil the hopes of his parents, who, having acted
with decision in a situation which took them unawares, were willing enough
to make amends by providing him with quite a large choice of suitable
partners. To their dismay it appeared that he had done with all thoughts
of matrimony: and I am not sure that, as the years went on, their dismay
did not deepen into regret. To the end he made them an admirable son, but
they went down to their graves and left him unmarried.

In all other respects he followed irreproachably the line of life they had
marked out for him. He succeeded to the directorate of the Bank in which
the family had made its money, and to those unpaid offices of local
distinction which his father had adorned. As a banker he was eminently
'sound'--that is to say, cautious, but not obstinately conservative; as a
Justice of the Peace, scrupulous, fair, inclined to mercy