was no light whispering of a word.  She was implored to enter the state of captivity by the pronunciation of vows—­a private but a binding ceremonial.  She had health and beauty, and money to gild these gifts; not that he stipulated for money with his bride, but it adds a lustre to dazzle the world; and, moreover, the pack of rival pursuers hung close behind, yelping and raising their dolorous throats to the moon.  Captive she must be.

He made her engagement no light whispering matter.  It was a solemn plighting of a troth.  Why not?  Having said, I am yours, she could say, I am wholly yours, I am yours forever, I swear it, I will never swerve from it, I am your wife in heart, yours utterly; our engagement is written above.  To this she considerately appended, “as far as I am concerned”; a piece of somewhat chilling generosity, and he forced her to pass him through love’s catechism in turn, and came out with fervent answers that bound him to her too indissolubly to let her doubt of her being loved.  And I am loved! she exclaimed to her heart’s echoes, in simple faith and wonderment.  Hardly had she begun to think of love ere the apparition arose in her path.  She had not thought of love with any warmth, and here it was.  She had only dreamed of love as one of the distant blessings of the mighty world, lying somewhere in the world’s forests, across wild seas, veiled, encompassed with beautiful perils, a throbbing secrecy, but too remote to quicken her bosom’s throbs.  Her chief idea of it was, the enrichment of the world by love.

Thus did Miss Middleton acquiesce in the principle of selection.

And then did the best man of a host blow his triumphant horn, and loudly.

He looked the fittest; he justified the dictum of Science.  The survival of the Patternes was assured.  “I would,” he said to his admirer, Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, “have bargained for health above everything, but she has everything besides—­lineage, beauty, breeding:  is what they call an heiress, and is the most accomplished of her sex.”  With a delicate art he conveyed to the lady’s understanding that Miss Middleton had been snatched from a crowd, without a breath of the crowd having offended his niceness.  He did it through sarcasm at your modern young women, who run about the world nibbling and nibbled at, until they know one sex as well as the other, and are not a whit less cognizant of the market than men; pure, possibly; it is not so easy to say innocent; decidedly not our feminine ideal.  Miss Middleton was different:  she was the true ideal, fresh-gathered morning fruit in a basket, warranted by her bloom.

Women do not defend their younger sisters for doing what they perhaps have done—­lifting a veil to be seen, and peeping at a world where innocence is as poor a guarantee as a babe’s caul against shipwreck.  Women of the world never think of attacking the sensual stipulation for perfect bloom, silver purity, which is redolent of the Oriental origin of the love-passion of their lords.  Mrs. Mountstuart congratulated Sir Willoughby on the prize he had won in the fair western-eastern.