To those who are conversant with the habits of ladies, it is needless to mention that Blanche did not, by any means, follow her uncle’s excellent advice and example, in betaking herself to immediate repose. The fair sex will easily comprehend how she sought Mrs. Delaval’s room, and how the two ladies sat up in “their wrappers” and consoled each other, and talked it all over, backwards and forwards, and came to no very logical conclusions; and, above all, how the proposal and its reception were quite as engrossing a topic, and were quite as much dwelt on as the loss of Blanche’s fine fortune; nor will it escape their observation that Mary’s greater worldly experience would clearly foresee the substitution of one cousin for another in this revolution amongst the Kettering possessions, and how a marriage between the two was the only plan to make everything right; and how the fair young face, with its kind eyes, that had haunted her so long, was farther from her now than ever. She knew, of course, long ago, that it was hopeless and impossible--that must surely have been a great consolation! When a child cries for the moon, and a cloud comes and covers up the coveted bauble, and hides it away, the urchin has small comfort in being told that it is just as near the object of its desires as when it could see it, and look, and long, and stretch its tiny hands. When the beggar-maiden sets her affections on King Cophetua, without a hope, in these days, of the famous fabulous _mésalliance_ being perpetrated, the fact that it does not, in reality, remove him one iota farther than before from her humble self, helps but little to assuage the pang inflicted on her infatuated heart by his Majesty’s nuptials with one of his own degree. The impossible may be increased in love, if not in logic, and Mary was lying awake and desponding, long after Blanche had forgotten all the excitement and changes of the evening in happy, dreamless slumbers. CHAPTER XIX DISPATCHES SOCIAL LIBERTY--DOMESTIC ECONOMY--A GAZETTE FROM THE CAPE--A MAN OF MANY IRONS--A TRUE FRIEND--A REAL HERO--COUPLES, NOT PAIRS--OH ME MISERUM!--GATHERED IN THE DEW