CHAPTER IV

HUGH STANBURY


It has been already stated that Nora Rowley was not quite so well
disposed as perhaps she ought to have been to fall in love with the
Honourable Charles Glascock, there having come upon her the habit
of comparing him with another gentleman whenever this duty of
falling in love with Mr Glascock was exacted from her. That other
gentleman was one with whom she knew that it was quite out of the
question that she should fall 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