‘Perhaps so, perhaps so,’ muttered the doctor, showing evidently that he still doubted the warmth of Mr Moffat’s affection.

’The match was none of my making, and I cannot interfere now to break it off:  it will give her a good position in the world; for, after all, money goes a great way, and it is something to be in Parliament.  I can only hope she likes him.  I do truly hope she likes him;’ and the squire also showed by the tone of his voice that, though he might hope that his daughter was in love with her intended husband, he hardly conceived it to be possible that she should be so.

And what was the truth of the matter?  Miss Gresham was no more in love with Mr Moffat than you are—­oh, sweet, young, blooming beauty!  Not a whit more; not, at least, in your sense of the word, nor in mine.  She had by no means resolved within her heart that of all the men whom she had ever seen, or ever could see, he was far away the nicest and the best.  That is what you will do when you are in love, if you be good for anything.  She had no longing to sit near to him—­the nearer the better; she had no thought of his taste and his choice when she bought her ribbons and bonnets; she had not indescribable desire that all her female friends should be ever talking to her about him.  When she wrote to him, she did not copy her letters again and again, so that she might be, as it were, ever speaking to him; she took no special pride in herself because he had chosen her to be his life’s partner.  In point of fact, she did not care one straw about him.

And yet she thought she loved him; was, indeed, quite confident that she did so; told her mother that she was sure Gustavus would wish this, she knew Gustavus would like that, and so on; but as for Gustavus himself, she did not care one chip about him.

She was in love with her match just as farmers are in love with wheat and eighty shillings a quarter; or shareholders—­innocent gudgeons—­with seven and half per cent interest on their paid up capital.  Eighty shillings a quarter, and seven and half per cent interest, such were the returns which she had been taught to look for in exchange for her young heart; and, having obtained them, or being thus about to obtain them, why should not her young heart be satisfied?  Had she not sat herself down obediently at the feet of her lady Gamaliel, and should she not be rewarded?  Yes, indeed, she shall be rewarded.

And then the doctor went to the lady.  On their medical secrets we will not intrude; but there were other matters bearing on the course of our narrative, as to which Lady Arabella found it necessary to say a word of so to the doctor; and it is essential that we should know what was the tenor of those few words so spoken.

How the aspirations, and instincts, and feelings of a household become changed as the young birds begin to flutter those feathered wings, and have half-formed thoughts of leaving the parental nest!  A few months back, Frank had reigned almost autocratic over the lesser subjects of the kingdom of Greshamsbury.  The servants, for instance, always obeyed him, and his sisters never dreamed of telling anything which he directed should not be told.  All his mischief, all his troubles, and all his loves were confided to them, with the sure conviction that they would never be made to stand in evidence against him.