countess--and it must be owned that the old Colonel, who had an honest
Anglo-Saxon reverence for a title, saw this chance lost wistfully--and
she might have married any number of grammarless gentlemen, personally
unknown to her, whose fervent proposals almost every mail brought in;
and besides these, there were many others, more orthodox in their
wooing, some of whom were genuinely in love with Margaret Hugonin, and
some--I grieve to admit it--who were genuinely in love with her money;
and she would have none of them.
She refused them all with the utmost civility, as I happen to know.
How I learned it is no affair of yours.