bout his
predispositions towards her adopted aunt. The description of these two
as wanting to rush into each other's arms was exaggerated. It would have
been fairer to say that Aunt Constance was fully prepared to consider an
offer, and that Mr. Pellew was beginning to see his way to making one.

The most promising feature in the lady's state of mind was that she was
formulating consolations, dormant now, but actively available if by
chance the gentleman did not see his way. She was saying to herself that
if another flower attracted this bee, she herself would thereby only
lose an admirer with a disposition--only a slight one perhaps, but still
undeniable--to become corpulent in the course of the next few years. She
could subordinate her dislike of smoking so long as she could suppose
him ever so little in earnest; but, if he did waver by any chance, what
a satisfaction it would be to dwell on her escape from--here a mixed
metaphor came in--the arms of a tobacco shop! She could shut her eyes,
if she was satisfied of the sincerity of a redeeming attachment to
herself, to all the contingencies of the previous life of a middle-aged
bachelor about town; but they would no doubt supply a set-off to his
disaffection, if that was written on the next page of her book of Fate.
In short, she would be prepared in that case to accept the conviction
that she was well rid of him. But all this was subcutaneous. Given only
the one great essential, that he was not merely philandering, and then
neither his escapades in the past, nor his cigars, nor even his
suggestions towards a corporation, would stand in the way of a
whole-hearted acceptance of a companion for life who had somehow managed
to be such a pleasant companion during that visit at the Towers. At
least, she would be better off than her four sisters. For this lady had
a wholesome aversion for her brothers-in-law, tending to support the
creed which teaches that the sacrament of marriage makes of its
votaries, or victims, not only parties to a contract, but one flesh, and
opens up undreamed-of possibilities of real fraternal dissension.

The gentleman, on the other hand, was in what we may suppose to be a
corresponding stage of uncertainty. He too was able to perceive, or
affect a perception, that, after all, if he came to the scratch and the
scratch eventuated--as scratches do sometimes--in a paralysis of
astonishment on the lady's part that such an idea should ever have
entered