But were we to enter into all the processes by which Lady Markham changed from the “That can never be!” of her first light on the subject, to giving a reluctant consent to Frances’ marriage, we should require another volume. It may be enough to say that in after-days, Captain Gaunt—but he was then Colonel—thought Constance a very handsome woman, yet could not understand how any one in his senses could consider the wife of Claude Ramsay worthy of a moment’s comparison with his own. “Handsome, yes, no doubt,” he would say; “and so is Nelly Markham, for that matter,—but of the earth, earthy, or of the world, worldly; whereas Frances——”
Words failed to express the difference, which was one with which words had nothing to do.
THE END.
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