And Frank, what of him? Had Barbara been deceived in him? had she misjudged his heart, his truth, his love? Not one whit; and yet how different he seemed! Throughout his life, Frank Churchill had acted on impulse, and had generally pulled through with extraordinary success. We have seen how, in the railway-journey back to Bissett, he had argued with himself, had persuaded himself into the determination of leaving the place and flying from temptation, and how on the impulse of a moment he settled the career of his life. To say he had repented of that step, would have been untrue; equally false would it have been to say that he had not been seriously disappointed in its result. The great charm of Barbara Lexden in his eyes had been her dissimilarity from other women. In the quiet circles in which he moved, there was no one kin to her; she stood out in bold relief among the fussy wives and meek colourless daughters of his friends, seeming a being of another sphere. And now, strange to say, this very contrast which had so captivated him, was his bane. What though the wives were fussy; they attended to their households with the utmost regularity, investigating the smallest matters of domestic detail, keeping down expenses here, making shift there, and having a comfortable home ready for their husbands wearied out with their work. What though the daughters were meek and colourless, without a fragment of taste in dress, without a spark of spirit, without one atom of dash; they were ready to strum the piano, or to play endless games of whist or picquet, when called upon, to enjoy thoroughly such little society as they had among themselves, and, in fact, to make themselves generally amiable. "Their girls did not lollop on the sofa and read trashy novels all day tong, my dear!" as Mrs. Harding more than once remarked; "they were not aristocrats, and couldn't jabber Italian; but they didn't lie in bed to breakfast, or be always fiddling with their hair, or dressing or undressing themselves twenty times a day. If those were aristocratic manners, the less she had of them the better." All this talk, and there was much of it perpetually current, reached Frank Churchill's ears through his mother, and if it did not render him actually unhappy, at least dashed his spirits and checked his joys. He would sit for hours pondering over these things, thinking of his past, when he had only himself and his old mother to care for, wondering what would have been his future, supposing he had married one of the daughters of Mesopotamia, and settled down into the snug humdrum life pursued by those colonists. And then sometimes Barbara would break in upon his reverie, and, looking so brilliantly handsome, would come up and kiss his forehead, and say a few loving words untinged by regret or complaint; and he would rejoice in the choice he had made, and thank that fortune which had thrown such a treasure in his way.