Dr Thorne

CHAPTER XVIII

THE RI­VALS

The in­ti­ma­cy be­tween Frank and Miss Dun­sta­ble grew and pros­pered. That is to say, it pros­pered as an in­ti­ma­cy, though per­haps hard­ly as a love af­fair. There was a con­tin­ued suc­ces­sion of jokes be­tween them, which no one else in the cas­tle un­der­stood; but the very fact of there be­ing such a good un­der­stand­ing be­tween them rather stood in the way of, than as­sist­ed, that con­sum­ma­tion which the count­ess de­sired. Peo­ple, when they are in love with each oth­er, or even when they pre­tend to be, do not gen­er­al­ly show it by loud laugh­ter. Nor is it fre­quent­ly the case that a wife with two hun­dred thou­sand pounds can be won with­out some lit­tle pre­lim­inary de­spair.

La­dy de Cour­cy, who thor­ough­ly un­der­stood that por­tion of the world in which she her­self lived, saw that things were not go­ing quite as they should do, and gave much and re­peat­ed ad­vice to Frank on the sub­ject. She was the more ea­ger in do­ing this, be­cause she imag­ined Frank had done what he could to obey her first pre­cepts. He had not turned up his nose at Miss Dun­sta­ble’s curls, nor found fault with her loud voice: he had not ob­ject­ed to her as ug­ly, nor even shown any dis­like to her age. A young man who had been so amenable to rea­son was wor­thy of fur­ther as­sis­tance; and so La­dy de Cour­cy did what she could to as­sist him.

‘Frank, my dear boy,’ she would say, ‘you are a lit­tle too noisy, I think. I don’t mean for my­self, you know; I don’t mind it. But Miss Dun­sta­ble would like it bet­ter if you were a lit­tle more qui­et with her.’

‘Would she, aunt?’ said Frank, look­ing de­mure­ly up in­to the count­ess’s face. ‘I rather think she likes fun and noise, and that sort of thing. You know she’s not very qui­et her­self.’

‘Ah!–but, Frank, there are times, you know, when that sort of thing should be laid aside. Fun, as you call it, is all very well in its place. In­deed, no one likes it bet­ter than I do. But that’s not the way to show ad­mi­ra­tion. Young ladies like to be ad­mired; and if you’ll be a lit­tle more soft-​man­nered with Miss Dun­sta­ble, I’m sure you’ll find it will an­swer bet­ter.’

And so the old bird taught the young bird how to fly–very need­less­ly–for in this mat­ter of fly­ing, Na­ture gives her own lessons thor­ough­ly; and the duck­lings will take the wa­ter, even though the ma­ter­nal hen warn them against the per­fid­ious el­ement nev­er so loud­ly.

Soon af­ter this, La­dy de Cour­cy be­gan to be not very well pleased in the mat­ter. She took it in­to her head that Miss Dun­sta­ble was some­times al­most in­clined to laugh at her; and on one or two oc­ca­sions it al­most seemed as though Frank was join­ing Miss Dun­sta­ble in do­ing so. The fact in­deed was, that Miss Dun­sta­ble was fond of fun; and, en­dowed as she was with all the priv­ileges which two hun­dred thou­sand pounds may be sup­posed to give to a young la­dy, did not very much care at whom she laughed. She was able to make a tol­er­ably cor­rect guess at La­dy De Cour­cy’s plan to­wards her­self; but she did not for a mo­ment think that Frank had any in­ten­tion of fur­ther­ing his aunt’s views. She was, there­fore, not at all ill-​in­clined to have her re­venge on the count­ess.

‘How very fond your aunt is of you!’ she said to him one wet morn­ing, as he was saun­ter­ing through the house; now laugh­ing, and al­most romp­ing with her–then teas­ing his sis­ter about Mr Mof­fat–and then both­er­ing his la­dy-​cousins out of all their pro­pri­ety.

‘Oh, very!’ said Frank: ’she is a dear, good wom­an, is my Aunt De Cour­cy.’

‘I de­clare she takes more no­tice of you and your do­ings than of any of your cousins. I won­der they aren’t jeal­ous.’

‘Oh! they’re such good peo­ple. Bless me, they’d nev­er be jeal­ous.’

‘You are so much younger than they are, that I sup­pose she thinks you want more of her care.’

‘Yes; that’s it. You see she is fond of hav­ing a ba­by to nurse.’

‘Tell me, Mr Gre­sham, what was it she was say­ing to you last night? I know we have been mis­be­hav­ing our­selves dread­ful­ly. It was all your fault; you would make me laugh so.’

‘That’s just what I said to her.’

‘She was talk­ing about it, then?’

‘How on earth should she talk of any one else as long as you are here? Don’t you know that all the world is talk­ing about you?’

‘Is it?–dear me, how kind! But I don’t care a straw about any world at present but La­dy de Cour­cy’s world. What did she say?’

‘She said you were very beau­ti­ful–’

‘Did she?–how good of her!’

‘No; I for­got. It–it was I that said that; and she said–what was it she said? She said, that af­ter all, beau­ty was but skin deep–and that she val­ued you for your virtues and pru­dence rather than your good looks.’

‘Virtues and pru­dence! She said I was pru­dent and vir­tu­ous?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you talked of my beau­ty? That was so kind of you. You didn’t ei­ther of you say any­thing about oth­er mat­ters?’

‘What oth­er mat­ters?’

‘Oh! I don’t know. On­ly some peo­ple are some­times val­ued rather for what they’ve got than for any good qual­ities be­long­ing to them­selves in­trin­si­cal­ly.’

‘That can nev­er be the case with Miss Dun­sta­ble; es­pe­cial­ly not at Cour­cy Cas­tle,’ said Frank, bow­ing eas­ily from the cor­ner of the so­fa over which he was lean­ing.

‘Of course not,’ said Miss Dun­sta­ble; and Frank at once per­ceived that she spoke in a tone of voice dif­fer­ing much from that half-​ban­ter­ing, half-​good-​hu­moured man­ner that was cus­tom­ary with her. ‘Of course not: any such idea would be quite out of the ques­tion with La­dy de Cour­cy.’ She paused for a mo­ment, and then added in a tone dif­fer­ent again, and un­like any that he had yet heard from her:–’It is, at any rate, out of the ques­tion with Mr Frank Gre­sham–of that I am quite sure.’

Frank ought to have un­der­stood her, and have ap­pre­ci­at­ed the good opin­ion which she in­tend­ed to con­vey; but he did not en­tire­ly do so. He was hard­ly hon­est him­self to­wards her; and he could not at first per­ceive that she in­tend­ed to say that she thought him so. He knew very well that she was al­lud­ing to her own huge for­tune, and was al­lud­ing al­so to the fact that peo­ple of fash­ion sought her be­cause of it; but he did not know that she in­tend­ed to ex­press a true ac­quit­tal as re­gard­ed him of any such base­ness.

And did he de­serve to be ac­quit­ted? Yes, up­on the whole he did;–to be ac­quit­ted of that spe­cial sin. His de­sire to make Miss Dun­sta­ble tem­porar­ily sub­ject to his sway arose, not from a han­ker­ing af­ter her for­tune, but from an am­bi­tion to get the bet­ter of a con­test in which oth­er men around him seemed to be fail­ing.

For it must not be imag­ined that, with such a prize to be strug­gled for, all oth­ers stood aloof and al­lowed him to have his own way with the heiress, undis­put­ed. The chance of a wife with two hun­dred thou­sand pounds is a god­send, which comes in a man’s life too sel­dom to be ne­glect­ed, let that chance be nev­er so re­mote.

Frank was the heir to a large em­bar­rassed prop­er­ty; and, there­fore, the heads of fam­ilies, putting their wis­doms to­geth­er, had thought it most meet that this daugh­ter of Plu­tus should, if pos­si­ble, fall to his lot. But not so thought the Hon­ourable George; and not so thought an­oth­er gen­tle­man who was at that time an in­mate of Cour­cy Cas­tle.

These suit­ors per­haps some­what de­spised their young ri­val’s ef­forts. It may be that they had suf­fi­cient world­ly wis­dom to know that so im­por­tant a cri­sis of life is not set­tled among quips and jokes, and that Frank was too much in jest to be in earnest. But be that as it may, his love-​mak­ing did not stand in the way of their love-​mak­ing; nor his hopes, if he had any, in the way of their hopes.

The Hon­ourable George had dis­cussed the mat­ter with the Hon­ourable John in a prop­er­ly fra­ter­nal man­ner. It may be that John had al­so an eye to the heiress; but, if so, he had ced­ed his views to his broth­er’s su­pe­ri­or claims; for it came about that they un­der­stood each oth­er very well, and John favoured George with salu­tary ad­vice on the oc­ca­sion.

‘If it is to be done at all, it should be done very sharp,’ said John.

‘As sharp as you like,’ said George. ‘I’m not the fel­low to be study­ing three months in what at­ti­tude I’ll fall at a girl’s feet.’

‘No: and when you are there you mustn’t take three months more to study how you’ll get up again. If you do it at all, you must do it sharp,’ re­peat­ed John, putting great stress on his ad­vice.

‘I have said a few soft words to her al­ready, and she didn’t seem to take them bad­ly,’ said George.

‘She’s no chick­en, you know,’ re­marked John; ‘and with a wom­an like that, beat­ing about the bush nev­er does any good. The chances are she won’t have you–that’s of course; plums like that don’t fall in­to a man’s mouth mere­ly for shak­ing the tree. But it’s pos­si­ble she may; and if she will, she’s as like­ly to take you to-​day as this day six months. If I were you I’d write her a let­ter.’

‘Write her a let­ter–eh?’ said George, who did not al­to­geth­er dis­like the ad­vice, for it seemed to take from his shoul­ders the bur­den of prepar­ing a spo­ken ad­dress. Though he was so glib in speak­ing about the farm­ers’ daugh­ters, he felt that he should have some lit­tle dif­fi­cul­ty in mak­ing known his pas­sion to Miss Dun­sta­ble, by word of mouth.

‘Yes; write a let­ter. If she’ll take you at all, she’ll take you that way; half the match­es go­ing are made up by writ­ing let­ters. Write her a let­ter and get it put on her dress­ing-​ta­ble.’ George said that he would, and so he did.

George spoke quite tru­ly when he hint­ed that he had said a few soft things to Miss Dun­sta­ble. Miss Dun­sta­ble, how­ev­er, was ac­cus­tomed to hear soft things. She had been car­ried much about in so­ci­ety among fash­ion­able peo­ple since, on the set­tle­ment of her fa­ther’s will, she had been pro­nounced heiress to all the oint­ment of Lebanon; and many men had made cal­cu­la­tions re­spect­ing her sim­ilar to those which were now an­imat­ing the brain of the Hon­ourable George de Cour­cy. She was al­ready quite ac­cus­tomed to be­ing a tar­get at which spendthrifts and the needy rich might shoot their ar­rows: ac­cus­tomed to be­ing shot at, and tol­er­ably ac­cus­tomed to pro­tect her­self with­out mak­ing scenes in the world, or re­ject­ing the ad­van­ta­geous es­tab­lish­ments of­fered to her with any loud ex­pres­sions of dis­dain. The Hon­ourable George, there­fore, had been per­mit­ted to say soft things very much as a mat­ter of course.

And very lit­tle more out­ward fra­cas arose from the cor­re­spon­dence which fol­lowed than had arisen from the soft things so said. George wrote the let­ter, and had it du­ly con­veyed to Miss Dun­sta­ble’s bed-​cham­ber. Miss Dun­sta­ble du­ly re­ceived it, and had her an­swer con­veyed back dis­creet­ly to George’s hands. The cor­re­spon­dence ran as fol­lows:–

‘Cour­cy Cas­tle, Aug. -, 185-. ‘MY DEAR­EST MISS DUN­STA­BLE,

‘I can­not but flat­ter my­self that you must have per­ceived from my man­ner that you are not in­dif­fer­ent to me. In­deed, in­deed, you are not. I may tru­ly say, and swear’ (these last strong words had been put in by the spe­cial coun­sel of the Hon­ourable John), ‘that if ev­er a man loved a wom­an tru­ly, I tru­ly love you. You may think it very odd that I should say this in a let­ter in­stead of speak­ing it out be­fore your face; but your pow­ers of raillery are so great’ (’touch her up about her wit’ had been the ad­vice of the Hon­ourable John) ‘that I am all but afraid to en­counter them. Dear­est, dear­est Martha–oh do not blame me for so ad­dress­ing you!–if you will trust your hap­pi­ness to me you shall nev­er find that you have been de­ceived. My am­bi­tion shall be to make you shine in that cir­cle which you are so well qual­ified to adorn and to see you firm­ly fixed in that sphere of fash­ion for which your tastes adapt you.

‘I may safe­ly as­sert–and I do as­sert it with my hand on my heart–that I am ac­tu­at­ed by no mer­ce­nary mo­tives. Far be it from me to mar­ry any wom­an–no, not a princess–on ac­count of her mon­ey. No mar­riage can be hap­py with­out mu­tu­al af­fec­tion; and I do ful­ly trust–no, not trust, but hope–that there may be such be­tween you and me, dear­est Miss Dun­sta­ble. What­ev­er set­tle­ments you might pro­pose I would ac­cede to. It is you, your sweet per­son, that I love, not your mon­ey.

‘For my­self, I need not re­mind you that I am the sec­ond son of my fa­ther; and that, as such, I hold no in­con­sid­er­able sta­tion in the world. My in­ten­tion is to get in­to Par­lia­ment, and to make a name for my­self, if I can, among those who shine in the House of Com­mons. My el­der broth­er, Lord Por­lock, is, you are aware, un­mar­ried; and we all fear that the fam­ily hon­ours are not like­ly to be per­pet­uat­ed by him, as he has all man­ner of trou­ble­some li­aisons which will prob­ably pre­vent his set­tling in life. There is noth­ing at all of that kind in my way. It will in­deed be a de­light to place a coro­net on the head of my love­ly Martha: a coro­net which can give no fresh grace to her, but which will be so much adorned by her wear­ing it.

‘Dear­est, Miss Dun­sta­ble, I shall wait with the ut­most im­pa­tience for your an­swer; and now, burn­ing with hope that it may not be al­to­geth­er un­favourable to my love, I beg per­mis­sion to sign my­self

‘Your own most de­vot­ed, ‘GEORGE DE COUR­CY’

The ar­dent lover had not to wait long for an an­swer from his mis­tress. She found this let­ter on her toi­let-​ta­ble one night as she went to bed. The next morn­ing she came down to break­fast and met her swain with the most un­con­cerned air in the world; so much so that he be­gan to think, as he munched his toast with rather a shame­faced look, that the let­ter on which so much was to de­pend had not yet come safe­ly to hand. But his sus­pense was not of a pro­longed du­ra­tion. Af­ter break­fast, as was his wont, he went out to the sta­bles with his broth­er and Frank Gre­sham; and while there, Miss Dun­sta­ble’s man, com­ing up to him, touched his hat, and put a let­ter in­to his hand.

Frank, who knew the man, glanced at the let­ter and looked at his cousin; but he said noth­ing. He was, how­ev­er, a lit­tle jeal­ous, and felt that an in­jury was done to him by any cor­re­spon­dence be­tween Miss Dun­sta­ble and his cousin George.

Miss Dun­sta­ble’s re­ply was as fol­lows; and it may be re­marked that it was writ­ten in a very clear and well-​penned hand, and one which cer­tain­ly did not be­tray much emo­tion of the heart:-

‘MY DEAR MR DE COUR­CY,

‘I am sor­ry to say that I had not per­ceived from your man­ner that you en­ter­tained any pe­cu­liar feel­ings to­wards me; as, had I done so, I should at once have en­deav­oured to put an end to them. I am much flat­tered by the way in which you speak of me; but I am in too hum­ble a po­si­tion to re­turn your af­fec­tion; and can, there­fore, on­ly ex­press a hope that you may be soon able to erad­icate it from your bo­som. A let­ter is a very good way of mak­ing an of­fer, and as such I do not think it at all odd; but I cer­tain­ly did not ex­pect such an hon­our last night. As to my raillery, I trust it has nev­er yet hurt you. I can as­sure you that it nev­er shall. I hope you will soon have a wor­thi­er am­bi­tion than that to which you al­lude; for I am well aware that no at­tempt will ev­er make me shine any­where.

‘I am quite sure you have had no mer­ce­nary mo­tives: such mo­tives in mar­riage are very base, and quite be­low your name and lin­eage. Any lit­tle for­tune that I may have must be a mat­ter of in­dif­fer­ence to one who looks for­ward, as you do, to put a coro­net on his wife’s brow. Nev­er­the­less, for the sake of the fam­ily, I trust that Lord Por­lock, in spite of his ob­sta­cles, may live to do the same for a wife of his own some of these days. I am glad to hear that there is noth­ing to in­ter­fere with your own prospects of do­mes­tic fe­lic­ity.

‘Sin­cere­ly hop­ing that you may be per­fect­ly suc­cess­ful in your proud am­bi­tion to shine in Par­lia­ment, and re­gret­ting ex­treme­ly that I can­not share that am­bi­tion with you, I beg to sub­scribe my­self, with very great re­spect,

‘Your sin­cere well-​wish­er, ‘MARTHA DUN­STA­BLE’

The Hon­ourable George, with that mod­esty which so well be­came him, ac­cept­ed Miss Dun­sta­ble’s re­ply as a fi­nal an­swer to his lit­tle propo­si­tion, and trou­bled her with no fur­ther courtship. As he said to his broth­er John, no harm had been done, and he might have bet­ter luck next time. But there was an in­ti­mate of Cour­cy Cas­tle who was some­what more per­ti­na­cious in his search af­ter love and wealth. This was no oth­er than Mr Mof­fat: a gen­tle­man whose am­bi­tion was not sat­is­fied by the cares of his Barch­ester con­test, or the pos­ses­sion of one af­fi­anced bride.

Mr Mof­fat was, as we have said, a man of wealth; but we all know, from the lessons of ear­ly youth, how the love of mon­ey in­creas­es and gains strength by its own suc­cess. Nor was he a man of so mean a spir­it as to be sat­is­fied with mere wealth. He de­sired al­so place and sta­tion, and gra­cious coun­te­nance among the great ones of the earth. Hence had come his ad­her­ence to the De Cour­cys; hence his seat in Par­lia­ment; and hence, al­so, his per­haps ill-​con­sid­ered match with Miss Gre­sham.

There is no doubt but that the priv­ilege of mat­ri­mo­ny of­fers op­por­tu­ni­ties to mon­ey-​lov­ing young men which ought not to be light­ly abused. Too many young men mar­ry with­out giv­ing any con­sid­er­ation to the mat­ter what­ev­er. It is not that they are in­dif­fer­ent to mon­ey, but that they reck­less­ly mis­cal­cu­late their own val­ue, and omit to look around and see how much is done by those who are more care­ful. A man can be young but once, and, ex­cept in cas­es of a spe­cial in­ter­po­si­tion of Prov­idence, can mar­ry but once. The chance once thrown away may be said to be ir­re­vo­ca­ble! How, in af­ter-​life, do men toil and tur­moil through long years to at­tain some prospect of doubt­ful ad­vance­ment! Half that trou­ble, half that care, a tithe of that cir­cum­spec­tion would, in ear­ly youth, have prob­ably se­cured to them the en­dur­ing com­fort of a wife’s wealth.

You will see men labour­ing night and day to be­come bank di­rec­tors; and even a bank di­rec­tion may on­ly be the road to ru­in. Oth­ers will spend years in de­grad­ing sub­servien­cy to ob­tain a niche in a will; and the niche, when at last ob­tained and en­joyed, is but a sor­ry pay­ment for all that has been en­dured. Oth­ers again, strug­gle hard­er still, and go through even deep­er wa­ters: they make wills for them­selves, forge stock-​shares, and fight with un­remit­ting, painful labour to ap­pear to be the thing they are not. Now, in many of these cas­es, all this might have been spared had the men made ad­equate use of those op­por­tu­ni­ties which youth and youth­ful charms af­ford once–and once on­ly. There is no road to wealth so easy and re­spectable as that of mat­ri­mo­ny; that, is of course, pro­vid­ed that the as­pi­rant de­clines the slow course to hon­est work. But then, we can so sel­dom put old heads on young shoul­ders!

In the case of Mr Mof­fat, we may per­haps say that a spec­imen was pro­duced of this bird, so rare in the land. His shoul­ders were cer­tain­ly young, see­ing that he was not yet six-​and-​twen­ty; but his head had ev­er been old. From the mo­ment when he was first put forth to go alone–at the age of twen­ty-​one–his life had been one cal­cu­la­tion how he could make the most of him­self. He had al­lowed him­self to be be­trayed in­to fol­ly by an un­guard­ed heart; no youth­ful in­dis­cre­tion had marred his prospects. He had made the most of him­self. With­out wit or depth, or any men­tal gift–with­out hon­esty of pur­pose or in­dus­try for good work–he had been for two years sit­ting mem­ber for Barch­ester; was the guest of Lord de Cour­cy; was en­gaged to the el­dest daugh­ter of one of the best com­mon­ers’ fam­ilies in Eng­land; and was, when he first be­gan to think of Miss Dun­sta­ble, san­guine that his re-​elec­tion to Par­lia­ment was se­cure.

When, how­ev­er, at this pe­ri­od he be­gan to cal­cu­late what his po­si­tion in the world re­al­ly was, it oc­curred to him that he was do­ing an ill-​judged thing in mar­ry­ing Miss Gre­sham. Why mar­ry a pen­ni­less girl–for Au­gus­ta’s tri­fle of a for­tune was not a pen­ny in his es­ti­ma­tion–while there was Miss Dun­sta­ble in the world to be won? His own six or sev­en thou­sand a year, quite un­em­bar­rassed as it was, was cer­tain­ly a great thing; but what might he not do if to that he could add the al­most fab­ulous wealth of the great heiress? Was she not here, put ab­so­lute­ly in his path? Would it not be a wil­ful throw­ing away of a chance not to avail him­self of it? He must, to be sure, lose the De Cour­cy friend­ship; but if he should then have se­cured his Barch­ester seat for the usu­al term of par­lia­men­tary ses­sion, he might be able to spare that. He would al­so, per­haps, en­counter some Gre­sham en­mi­ty: this was a point on which he did think more than once: but what will a man not en­counter for the sake of two hun­dred thou­sand pounds?

It was thus that Mr Mof­fat ar­gued with him­self, with much pru­dence, and brought him­self to re­solve that he would at any rate be­come the can­di­date for the great prize. He al­so, there­fore, be­gan to say soft things; and it must be ad­mit­ted that he said them with more con­sid­er­ate pro­pri­ety than had the Hon­ourable George. Mr Mof­fat had an idea that Miss Dun­sta­ble was not a fool, and that in or­der to catch her he must do more than en­deav­our to lay salt on her tail, in the guise of flat­tery. It was ev­ident to him that she was a bird of some cun­ning, not to be caught by an or­di­nary gin, such as those com­mon­ly in use with the Hon­ourable Georges of So­ci­ety.

It seemed to Mr Mof­fat, that though Miss Dun­sta­ble was so spright­ly, so full of fun, and so ready to chat­ter on all sub­jects, she well knew the val­ue of her own mon­ey, and of her po­si­tion as de­pen­dent on it: he per­ceived that she nev­er flat­tered the count­ess, and seemed to be no whit ab­sorbed by the ti­tled grandeur of her host’s fam­ily. He gave her cred­it, there­fore, for an in­de­pen­dent spir­it: and an in­de­pen­dent spir­it in his es­ti­ma­tion was one that placed its sole de­pen­dence on a re­spectable bal­ance at its banker’s.

Work­ing on these ideas, Mr Mof­fat com­menced op­er­ations in such man­ner that his over­tures to the heiress should not, if un­suc­cess­ful, in­ter­fere with the Gre­shams­bury en­gage­ment. He be­gan by mak­ing com­mon cause with Miss Dun­sta­ble: their po­si­tions in the world, he said to her, were close­ly sim­ilar. They had both risen from the low­er class­es by the strength of hon­est in­dus­try: they were both now wealthy, and had both hith­er­to made such use of their wealth as to in­duce the high­est aris­toc­ra­cy in Eng­land to ad­mit them in­to their cir­cles.

‘Yes, Mr Mof­fat,’ had Miss Dun­sta­ble re­marked; ‘and if all that I hear be true, to ad­mit you in­to their very fam­ilies.’

At this Mr Mof­fat slight­ly de­murred. He would not af­fect, he said, to mis­un­der­stand what Miss Dun­sta­ble meant. There had been some­thing said on the prob­abil­ity of such an event; but he begged Miss Dun­sta­ble not to be­lieve all that she heard on such sub­jects.

‘I do not be­lieve much,’ said she; ‘but I cer­tain­ly did think that that might be cred­it­ed.’

Mr Mof­fat went on to show how it be­hoved them both, in hold­ing out their hands half-​way to meet the aris­to­crat­ic over­tures that were made to them, not to al­low them­selves to be made use of. The aris­toc­ra­cy, ac­cord­ing to Mr Mof­fat, were peo­ple of a very nice sort; the best ac­quain­tance in the world; a por­tion of mankind to be no­ticed by whom should be one of the first ob­jects in the life of the Dun­sta­bles and the Mof­fats. But the Dun­sta­bles and Mof­fats should be very care­ful to give lit­tle or noth­ing in re­turn. Much, very much in re­turn, would be looked for. The aris­toc­ra­cy, said Mr Mof­fat, were not a peo­ple to al­low in the light of their coun­te­nance to shine forth with­out look­ing for a quid pro quo, for some com­pen­sat­ing val­ue. In all their in­ter­course with the Dun­sta­bles and Mof­fats, they would ex­pect a pay­ment. It was for the Dun­sta­bles and Mof­fats to see that, at any rate, they did not pay more for the ar­ti­cle they got than its mar­ket val­ue.

They way in which she, Miss Dun­sta­ble, and he, Mr Mof­fat, would be re­quired to pay would be by tak­ing each of them some poor scion of the aris­toc­ra­cy in mar­riage; and thus ex­pend­ing their hard-​earned wealth in procur­ing high-​priced plea­sures for some well-​born pau­per. Against this, pe­cu­liar cau­tion was to be used. Of course, the fur­ther in­duc­tion to be shown was this: that peo­ple so cir­cum­stanced should mar­ry among them­selves; the Dun­sta­bles and the Mof­fats each with the oth­er and not tum­ble in­to the pit­falls pre­pared for them.

Whether these great lessons had any last­ing ef­fect on Miss Dun­sta­ble’s mind may be doubt­ed. Per­haps she had al­ready made up her mind on the sub­ject which Mr Mof­fat so well dis­cussed. She was old­er than Mr Mof­fat, and, in spite of his two years of par­lia­men­tary ex­pe­ri­ence, had per­haps more knowl­edge of the world with which she had to deal. But she lis­tened to what he said with com­pla­cen­cy; un­der­stood his ob­ject as well as she had that of his aris­to­crat­ic ri­val; was no whit of­fend­ed; but groaned in her spir­it as she thought of the wrongs of Au­gus­ta Gre­sham.

But all this good ad­vice, how­ev­er, would not win the mon­ey for Mr Mof­fat with­out some more de­cid­ed step; and that step he soon de­cid­ed on tak­ing, feel­ing as­sured that what he had said would have its due weight with the heiress.

The par­ty at Cour­cy Cas­tle was now soon about to be bro­ken up. The male De Cour­cys were go­ing down to a Scotch moun­tain. The fe­male De Cour­cys were to be shipped off to an Irish cas­tle. Mr Mof­fat was to go up to town to pre­pare his pe­ti­tion. Miss Dun­sta­ble was again about to start on a for­eign tour in be­half of her physi­cian and at­ten­dants; and Frank Gre­sham was at last to be al­lowed to go to Cam­bridge; that is to say, un­less his suc­cess with Miss Dun­sta­ble should ren­der such a step on his part quite pre­pos­ter­ous.

‘I think you may speak now, Frank,’ said the count­ess. ‘I re­al­ly think you may: you have known her now for a con­sid­er­able time; and, as far as I can judge, she is very fond of you.’

‘Non­sense, aunt,’ said Frank; ’she doesn’t care a but­ton for me.’

‘I think dif­fer­ent­ly; and look­ers-​on, you know, al­ways un­der­stand the game best. I sup­pose you are not afraid to ask her.’

‘Afraid!’ said Frank, in a tone of con­sid­er­able scorn. He al­most made up his mind that he would ask her to show that he was not afraid. His on­ly ob­sta­cle to do­ing so was, that he had not the slight­est in­ten­tion of mar­ry­ing her.

There was to be but one oth­er great event be­fore the par­ty broke up, and that was a din­ner at the Duke of Om­ni­um’s. The duke had al­ready de­clined to come to Cour­cy; but he had in a mea­sure atoned for this by ask­ing some of the guests to join a great din­ner which he was about to give to his neigh­bours.

Mr Mof­fat was to leave Cour­cy Cas­tle the day af­ter the din­ner-​par­ty, and he there­fore de­ter­mined to make his great at­tempt on the morn­ing of that day. It was with some dif­fi­cul­ty that he brought about an op­por­tu­ni­ty; but at last he did so, and found him­self alone with Miss Dun­sta­ble in the walks of Cour­cy Park.

‘It is a strange thing, is it not,’ said he, re­cur­ring to his old view of the same sub­ject, ‘that I should be go­ing to dine with the Duke of Om­ni­um–the rich­est man, they say, among the whole En­glish aris­toc­ra­cy?’

‘Men of that kind en­ter­tain ev­ery­body, I be­lieve, now and then,’ said Miss Dun­sta­ble, not very civil­ly.

‘I be­lieve they do; but I am not go­ing as one of the ev­ery­bod­ies. I am go­ing from Lord de Cour­cy’s house with some of his own fam­ily. I have no pride in that–not the least; I have more pride in my fa­ther’s hon­est in­dus­try. But it shows what mon­ey does in this coun­try of ours.’

‘Yes, in­deed; mon­ey does a great deal many queer things.’ In say­ing this Miss Dun­sta­ble could not but think that mon­ey had done a very queer thing in in­duc­ing Miss Gre­sham to fall in love with Mr Mof­fat.

‘Yes; wealth is very pow­er­ful: here we are, Miss Dun­sta­ble, the most hon­oured guests in the house.’

‘Oh! I don’t know about that; you may be, for you are a mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, and all that–’

‘No; not a mem­ber now, Miss Dun­sta­ble.’

‘Well, you will be, and that’s all the same; but I have no such ti­tle to hon­our, thank God.’

They walked on in si­lence for a lit­tle while, for Mr Mof­fat hard­ly knew who to man­age the busi­ness he had in hand. ‘It is quite de­light­ful to watch these peo­ple,’ he said at last; ‘now they ac­cuse us of be­ing tuft-​hunters.’

‘Do they?’ said Miss Dun­sta­ble. ‘Up­on my word I didn’t know that any­body ev­er so ac­cused me.’

‘I didn’t mean you and me per­son­al­ly.’

‘Oh! I’m glad of that.’

‘But that is what the world says of per­sons of our class. Now it seems to me that toad­ying is all on the oth­er side. The count­ess here does toady you, and so do the young ladies.’

‘Do they? if so, up­on my word I didn’t know it. But, to tell the truth, I don’t think much of such things. I live most­ly to my­self, Mr Mof­fat.’

‘I see that you do, and I ad­mire you for it; but, Miss Dun­sta­ble, you can­not al­ways live so,’ and Mr Mof­fat looked at her in a man­ner which gave her the first in­ti­ma­tion of his com­ing burst of ten­der­ness.

‘That’s as may be, Mr Mof­fat,’ said she.

He went on beat­ing about the bush for some time–giv­ing her to un­der­stand now nec­es­sary it was that per­sons sit­uat­ed as they were should live ei­ther for them­selves or for each oth­er, and that, above all things, they should be­ware of falling in­to the mouths of vo­ra­cious aris­to­crat­ic li­ons who go about look­ing for prey–till they came to a turn in the grounds; at which Miss Dun­sta­ble de­clared her in­ten­tion of go­ing in. She had walked enough, she said. As by this time Mr Mof­fat’s im­me­di­ate in­ten­tions were be­com­ing vis­ible she thought it pru­dent to re­tire. ‘Don’t let me take you in, Mr Mof­fat; but my boots are a lit­tle damp, and Dr Easy­man will nev­er for­give me if I do not hur­ry in as fast as I can.’

‘Your feet damp?–I hope not: I do hope not,’ said he, with a look of the great­est so­lic­itude.

‘Oh! it’s noth­ing to sig­ni­fy; but it’s well to be pru­dent, you know. Good morn­ing, Mr Mof­fat.’

‘Miss Dun­sta­ble!’

‘Eh–yes!’ and Miss Dun­sta­ble stopped in the grand path. ‘I won’t let you re­turn with me, Mr Mof­fat, be­cause I know you were com­ing in so soon.’

‘Miss Dun­sta­ble; I shall be leav­ing here to-​mor­row.’

‘Yes; and I go my­self the day af­ter.’

‘I know it. I am go­ing to town and you are go­ing abroad. It may be long–very long–be­fore we meet again.’

‘About East­er,’ said Miss Dun­sta­ble; ‘that is, if the doc­tor doesn’t known up on the road.’

‘And I had, had wish to say some­thing be­fore we part for so long a time. Miss Dun­sta­ble–’

‘Stop!–Mr Mof­fat. Let me ask you one ques­tion. I’ll hear any­thing that you have got to say, but on one con­di­tion: that is, that Miss Au­gus­ta Gre­sham shall be by while you say it. Will you con­sent to that?’

‘Miss Au­gus­ta Gre­sham,’ said he, ‘has no right to lis­ten to my pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion.’

‘Has she not, Mr Mof­fat? then I think she should have. I, at any rate, will not so far in­ter­fere with what I look on as her un­doubt­ed priv­ileges as to be a par­ty to any se­cret in which she may not par­tic­ipate.’

‘But, Miss Dun­sta­ble–’

And to tell you fair­ly, Mr Mof­fat, any se­cret that you do tell me, I shall most un­doubt­ed­ly re­peat to her be­fore din­ner. Good morn­ing, Mr Mof­fat; my feet are cer­tain­ly a lit­tle damp, and if I stay a mo­ment longer, Dr Easy­man will put off my for­eign trip for at least a week.’ And so she left him stand­ing alone in the mid­dle of the grav­el-​walk.

For a mo­ment or two, Mr Mof­fat con­soled him­self in his mis­for­tune by think­ing how he might avenge him­self on Miss Dun­sta­ble. Soon, how­ev­er, such fu­tile ideas left his brain. Why should he give over the chase be­cause the rich galleon had es­caped him on this, his first cruise in pur­suit of her? Such prizes were not to be won so eas­ily. His present ob­jec­tion clear­ly con­sist­ed in his en­gage­ment to Miss Gre­sham, and in that on­ly. Let that en­gage­ment be at an end, no­to­ri­ous­ly and pub­licly bro­ken off, and this ob­jec­tion would fall to the ground. Yes; ships so rich­ly freight­ed were not to be run down in one sum­mer morn­ing’s plain sail­ing. In­stead of look­ing for his re­venge on Miss Dun­sta­ble, it would be more pru­dent in him–more in keep­ing with his char­ac­ter–to pur­sue his ob­ject, and over­come such dif­fi­cul­ties as he might find his way.