in love, because he had not a shilling in the world; and the other gentleman was equally aware that it was not open to him to fall in love with Nora Rowley for the same reason.  In regard to such matters Nora Rowley had been properly brought up, having been made to understand by the best and most cautious of mothers, that in that matter of falling in love it was absolutely necessary that bread and cheese should be considered.  ‘Romance is a very pretty thing,’ Lady Rowley had been wont to say to her daughters, ’and I don’t think life would be worth having without a little of it.  I should be very sorry to think that either of my girls would marry a man only because he had money.  But you can’t even be romantic without something to eat and drink.’  Nora thoroughly understood all this, and being well aware that her fortune in the world, if it ever was to be made at all, could only be made by marriage, had laid down for herself certain hard lines lines intended to be as fast as they were hard.  Let what might come to her in the way of likings and dislikings, let the temptation to her be ever so strong, she would never allow her heart to rest on a man who, if he should ask her to be his wife, would not have the means of supporting her.  There were many, she knew, who would condemn such a resolution as cold, selfish, and heartless.  She heard people saying so daily.  She read in books that it ought to be so regarded.  But she declared to herself that she would respect the judgment neither of the people nor of the books.  To be poor alone, to have to live without a husband, to look forward to a life in which there would be nothing of a career, almost nothing to do, to await the vacuity of an existence in which she would be useful to no one, was a destiny which she could teach herself to endure, because it might probably be forced upon her by necessity.  Were her father to die there would hardly be bread for that female flock to eat.  As it was, she was eating the bread of a man in whose house she was no more than a visitor.  The lot of a woman; as she often told herself, was wretched, unfortunate, almost degrading.  For a woman such as herself there was no path open to her energy, other than that of getting a husband.  Nora Rowley thought of all this till she was almost sick of the prospect of her life—­especially sick of it when she was told with much authority by the Lady Milboroughs of her acquaintance, that it was her bounden duty to fall in love with Mr Glascock.  As to falling in love with Mr Glascock, she had not as yet quite made up her mind.  There was so much to be said on that side of the question, if such falling in love could only be made possible.  But she had quite made up her mind that she would never fall in love with a poor man.  In spite, however, of all that, she felt herself compelled to make comparisons between Mr Glascock and one Mr Hugh Stanbury, a gentleman who had not a shilling.