resolved that he would
know his fate, let it be what it might. If he could not contrive that
things should speedily be arranged, it might come to pass that he
would be altogether debarred from presenting himself to the lady
as Mr. Sowerby of Chaldicotes. Tidings had reached him, through Mr.
Fothergill, that the duke would be glad to have matters arranged; and
Mr. Sowerby well knew the meaning of that message.

Mr. Sowerby was not fighting this campaign alone, without the aid of
an ally. Indeed, no man ever had a more trusty ally in any campaign
than he had in this. And it was this ally, the only faithful comrade
that clung to him through good and ill during his whole life, who
first put it into his head that Miss Dunstable was a woman and might
be married. "A hundred needy adventurers have attempted it, and
failed already," Mr. Sowerby had said, when the plan was first
proposed to him.

"But, nevertheless, she will some day marry some one; and why not you
as well as another?" his sister had answered. For Mrs. Harold Smith
was the ally of whom I have spoken. Mrs. Harold Smith, whatever may
have been her faults, could boast of this virtue--that she loved
her brother. He was probably the only human being that she did love.
Children she had none; and as for her husband, it had never occurred
to her to love him. She had married him for a position; and being a
clever woman, with a good digestion and command of her temper, had
managed to get through the world without much of that unhappiness
which usually follows ill-assorted marriages. At home she managed to
keep the upper hand, but she did so in an easy, good-humoured way
that made her rule bearable; and away from home she assisted her
lord's political standing, though she laughed more keenly than
any one else at his foibles. But the lord of her heart was her
brother; and in all his scrapes, all his extravagances, and all his
recklessness, she had ever been willing to assist him. With the view
of doing this she had sought the intimacy of Miss Dunstable, and
for the last year past had indulged every caprice of that lady. Or
rather, she had had the wit to learn that Miss Dunstable was to
be won, not by the indulgence of caprices, but by free and easy
intercourse, with a dash of fun, and, at any rate, a semblance of
honesty. Mrs. Harold Smith was not, perhaps, herself very honest by
disposition; but in these latter days she had taken up a theory of
honesty for the sake of M