CHAPTER IX. "A LITTLE PROUD, BUT FULL OF PITY.*" (*Ben Jonson.) Although only twenty-four hours absent from Bissett, Frank Churchill during that short period had undergone more mental conflict than is often suffered by many men in a course of years. He had had full time for reflection, and had availed himself of it to the utmost. While within the charmed circle he was necessarily under fascination; but now, although the witch was any thing but exorcised, he felt sufficiently himself to collect his thoughts, and he saw the absolute necessity of coming to some fixed determination as to his future conduct before he returned. Often before had he had occasion to weigh matters almost as important as this, though of course of a different character; and he was not the man to blink one jot of the attendant difficulties, or to over-persuade himself as to the feasibility of his designs simply because he wished them carried out. He was in love with this girl, then; he supposed that must be granted? at all events, by analysis and comparison, that was easily ascertained. Though, as the world goes, his life had been tolerably pure, he had in his student-days, and in the time immediately subsequent, had his _amourettes_ and flirtations like the rest; but when he remembered what had been his feelings for Gretchen, the fat and fair daughter of Anton Schütz, the beery saddler; for Ernestine, the sentimental heiress of the Graf von Triebenfeld; for Eugénie and Olympe, vestals of the Quartier Latin; or for any of the half-hundred young ladies with whom during the earlier portion of his London career he had gone through the usual bouquet-sending, cotillon-dancing, Botanical-Fête-meeting flirtation,--he recognised at once that this was a very different matter. Breakers ahead and all round! As for Barbara, he felt conscious of no vanity in avowing to himself his perception of having excited her interest, but whether sufficiently to induce her to listen to an offer he could not imagine. Possibly, probably, she looked to making a brilliant marriage: her beauty and accomplishments were her capital, and should be turned to good purpose; and yet, as this idea passed through his mind, he had an instinctive feeling that Barbara's proud spirit would revolt from any such match, however much it might be pressed on her by her relations. Her relations! ay, even granting the girl's acquiescence, _there_ would be one of the grand sources of difficulty: old Miss Lexden, rich, selfish, and narrow-minded, would doubtless oppose such a marriage in every possible way; and how would Sir Marmaduke look upon him, having come an invited and a welcome guest, and then brought this discord into the family? And even suppose it arranged somehow, she consenting and her friends satisfied, what was to be done with his mother, with whom and in whose house he then resided? how and where was the rest of her life to be passed? He could not live far from the