wenches who trip toward the altar as carelessly as if the partnership were
for a country-dance."

Lady Allonby stirred her tea and said nothing. Notoriously her marriage had
been unhappy; and her two years of widowhood (dating from the unlamented
seizure, brought on by an inherited tendency to apoplexy and French
brandy, which carried off Lord Stephen Allonby of Prestonwoode) had to all
appearance never tempered her distrust of the matrimonial state. Certain it
was that she had refused many advantageous offers during this period, for
her jointure was considerable, and, though in candid moments she confessed
to thirty-three, her dearest friends could not question Lady Allonby's
good looks. She was used to say that she would never re-marry, because she
desired to devote herself to her step-daughter, but, as gossip had it at
Tunbridge, she was soon to be deprived of this subterfuge; for Miss Allonby
had reached her twentieth year, and was nowadays rarely seen in public save
in the company of Mr. Erwyn, who, it was generally conceded, stood high in
the girl's favor and was desirous of rounding off his career as a leader of
fashion with the approved comoedic _denouement_ of marriage with a young
heiress.

For these reasons Lady Allonby heard with interest his feeling allusion to
the laxity of the age, and through a moment pondered thereon, for it seemed
now tolerably apparent that Mr. Erwyn had lingered, after the departure of
her other guests, in order to make a disclosure which Tunbridge had for
many months expected.

"I had not thought," said she, at length, "that you, of all men, would ever
cast a serious eye toward marriage. Indeed, Mr. Erwyn, you have loved women
so long that I must dispute your ability to love a woman--and your amours
have been a byword these twenty years."