But before many years had passed she realised that unless she married there could be no prospect of peace.  Already she had quarrelled with a dozen companions of her own sex; she wished now to try one of the other.  But men seemed tired of proposing to her.  She had the character of being as hard and cold as iron; and no one cared to run his head against a wall.  If she wanted a husband now the proposal must come from her.  Miss Purling in her heart rather liked the notion; it gave her a chance of posing like a queen in search of a consort, and years of independence had made her very queenlike and despotic indeed.  So much so, that the only man to suit her must be a mere cipher without a will of his own; and he was difficult to find.  Men of the kind are not plentiful unless they plainly perceive substantial advantage from assuming the part.  But few guessed what kind of man would exactly suit Isabel Purling, so there were few pretenders.

Among those who flocked to her soirees—­she was fond of entertaining in spite of her disabilities as a single woman—­was a meek little professor, who lodged in Camden Town, and who came afoot in roomy goloshes, which now and again, in a fit of abstraction, he carried upstairs and laid upon the tea-table or at his hostess’s feet, as though the carpet was damp and he feared she might run the risk of catarrh.  He was reputed to be extremely erudite, a ripe scholar, and of some fame in scientific research.  But of all his discoveries—­and he had made many under the microscope and in space—­the most surprising was the discovery that a lady who owned a deer-park and many thousands a-year desired him to make her his wife.  But he was an obliging little man, always ready to do a kind thing for anybody; and he obliged Miss Purling in the way she wished—­after all, at some cost to himself.  The marriage meant little less than self-effacement for him; he was to take his wife’s name instead of giving her his; he was to forego his favourite pursuits, and from an independent man of science pass into a mere appendage to the Purling property—­part and parcel of his wife’s goods and chattels as much as the park-palings, or her last-purchased dinner-service of rare old “blue.”

It was odd that Miss Purling’s choice should have fallen where it did; for her tendencies were decidedly upward, and she would have dearly loved to be styled “my lady,” and to have moved freely in the society of the “blue-blooded of the land.”  It was her distrustfulness which had stood in the way.  She feared that in an aristocratic alliance she could not have made her own terms.  And with the results of this marriage with Dr. Purling—­as he was henceforth styled—­she had every reason to be pleased.  He proved a most exemplary husband—­the chief of her subjects, nothing more; a loyal, unpretending vassal, who did not ask to share the purple, but was content to sit upon the steps of the throne.  He continued a shy, reserved, unobtrusive little man to the end of the chapter; and the chapter was closed without unnecessary delay as soon as the birth of a son secured the succession of the Purling estates.  Dr. Purling felt there was nothing more required of him, so he quietly died.