"So much the worse, Arthur,--so much the worse. The more reason that she is utterly unlikely to possess or to be able readily to acquire the peculiar knowledge which would fit her to act under the circumstances of which I am speaking. Your clever people--such at least as are called clever by you and those whom you cultivate--are precisely the people who act idiotically in worldly affairs, who either know nothing or who set at defiance the convenances of society, and of whom nothing can be made. That man--no, let me give you an example--that man who dined here last Thursday on your invitation--Professor Somebody, wasn't he?--Ive heard of him at that place where they give the scientific lectures in Albemarle Street--was any thing ever seen like his cravat, or his shoes, or the way in which he ate his soup?--he trod on my dress twice in going down to dinner, and I heard perfectly plainly what Lady Clanronald said to that odious Mr. Beauchamp Hogg about him."
"My father spoke to me in the highest terms about--"
"Of course he did; that's just it. Your father knows nothing about this sort of thing. It all falls upon me. If Annie Maurice were to make a mésalliance, or, without going so far as that, were to permit herself to be engaged to some penniless fortune-hunter, and were to refuse--as she very likely would, for she has an amount of obstinacy in her composition, I am inclined to think, which one very seldom finds--to listen to the remonstrances of those whose opinion ought to have weight with her, it is I, not your father, who would be blamed by the world."
"Your troubles certainly seem greater, mother, than I, in my bachelor ignorance, could have imagined."
"They are not comprehensible, even after my explanation, Arthur, by those who have not to undergo them. There is scarcely any thing in my married life which has given me such pleasure as the thought that, having no daughters, I should be relieved of all duties of chaperonage; that I should not be compelled to go to certain places unless I wished; and that I should be able to leave others at what hours I liked. And now I find this very duty incumbent upon me."
"Well, but, my dear mother, surely Annie is the very last girl in the world for whom it is necessary to make any such sacrifices. She does not care about going out; and when out, she seems, from all she says to me, to have only one anxiety, and that is--to get home again as soon as possible."
"Ay, from all she says to you, Arthur; but then you know, as Ive said before, you are a regular old bachelor, without the power of comprehending these things, and to whom a girl certainly would not be likely to show her real feelings. No; there's only one way to relieve me from my responsibility."
"And that is--"
"And that is by getting her married."
"A-ah!" Caterham drew a long breath--it was coming now.