“Pooh! it isn’t such a dreadful thing, if he is only rich enough,” said Aunt Dagon, in a consoling voice.  “Every thing depends on that; and I haven’t much doubt of it.  Alfred Dinks is a fool, my dear, but Fanny Newt is not; and Fanny Newt is not the girl to marry a fool, except for reasons.  You may trust Fanny, Nancy.  You may depend there was some foolish something with Hope Wayne, on the part of Alfred, and Fanny has cut the knot she was not sure of untying.  Pooh! pooh!  When you are as old as I am you won’t be distressed over these things.  Fanny Newt is fully weaned.  She wants an establishment, and she has got it.  There are plenty of people who would have been glad to marry their daughters to Alfred Dinks.  I can tell you there are some great advantages in having a fool for your husband.  Don’t you see Fanny never would have been happy with a man she couldn’t manage.  It’s quite right, my dear.”

At this moment the bell rang, and Mrs. Newt, not wishing to be caught with red eyes, called May, who had looked on at this debate, and left the room.

While Mrs. Dagon had been so volubly talking she had also been busily thinking.  She knew that if Alfred were a fool his mother was not—­at least, not in the way she meant.  There had been no love lost between the ladies, so that Mrs. Dagon was disposed to criticise the other’s conduct very closely.  She saw, therefore, that if Alfred Dinks were not rich—­and it certainly was a question whether he were so really, or only in expectation from Mr. Burt—­then also he might not be engaged to Hope Wayne.  But the story of his wealth and his engagement might very easily have been the ruse by which the skillful Mrs. Dinks meant to conduct her campaign in New York.  In that case, what was more likely than that she should have improved Fanny’s evident delusion in regard to her son, and, by suggesting to him an elopement, have secured for him the daughter of a merchant so universally reputed wealthy as Boniface Newt?

Mrs. Dagon was clever—­so was Mrs. Dinks; and it is the homage that one clever person always pays to another to believe the other capable of every thing that occurs to himself.

In the matter of the marriage Mrs. Budlong Dinks had been defeated, but she was not dismayed.  She had lost Hope Wayne, indeed, and she could no longer hope, by the marriage of Alfred with his cousin, to consolidate the Burt property in her family.  She had been very indignant—­very deeply disappointed.  But she still loved her son, and the meditation of a night refreshed her.

Upon a survey of the field, Mrs. Dinks felt that under no circumstances would Hope have married Alfred; and he had now actually married Fanny.  So much was done.  It was useless to wish impossible wishes.  She did not desire her son to starve or come to social shame, although he had married Fanny; and Fanny, after all, was rather a belle, and the daughter of a rich merchant, who would have to support them.  She knew, of course, that Fanny supposed her husband would share in the great Burt property.  But as Mrs. Dinks herself believed the same thing, that did not surprise her.  In fact, they would all be gainers by it; and nothing now remained but to devote herself to securing that result.