arriage is a very uncertain lottery; and if they draw a prize,
they are not easily persuaded to throw it back into fate's bag, and play
for another. The very element of uncertainty lends excitement to the
game, and they readily attribute all sorts of perfections to the
imaginary stranger who is to be the partner of their lives.

But in this, Veronica's ideas were quite different. She had assuredly not
been brought up in vanity and pride of station, and though naturally
proud, she was not at all vain. From her childhood, however, she had
received something of that sort of constant consideration which is the
portion of those born to exalted fortunes. She had never had less of it,
perhaps, than in her aunt's house; for the Countess Macomer was not
only of her own race and name, and therefore too near to her to show her
any such little formalities of respect, but had also, as a matter of
policy and with considerable tact, managed to keep the dominant position
in her own house. She had shut out the little court of young friends who
would very probably have gathered round her niece--acquaintances of
Veronica's convent days, older than herself, but anxious enough to be
called her friends--and the tribe of men, old and young, who, in the
extremely complicated relationships of the Neapolitan nobility, claimed
some right to be treated as cousins and connexions of the family. All
these Matilde had strenuously kept away, isolating Veronica as much as
possible from young people of her own age, and proportionately
diminishing both the girl's power to choose a husband for herself and
her appreciation of her own right to make the choice. Nevertheless,
Veronica knew that she had that right, and she intended to exercise it.
Unconsciously, however, her judgment had been guided towards the
selection of Bosio, so that she was now by no means so free an agent as
she supposed herself to be. She did not love him at all; but she liked
him very much, and admired him, and since it was time for her to be
married, she was strongly inclined to choose for her husband the only
man of her acquaintance whom she both admired and liked.

These long and tedious explanations are necessary in order to explain
how it came about that Veronica Serra, with her great position and vast
estates, seriously thought of uniting herself with such a comparatively
obscure personage as Count Bosio Macomer. Taquisara had very fairly
described the latter's position to her th