Ah! on this, a word for what it is worth to you, my young readers. You, sir, wishing to marry a girl who is to be deeply, lastingly in love with you, and a thoroughly good wife practically, consider well how she takes to your parents; how she attaches to them an inexpressible sentiment, a disinterested reverence; even should you but dimly recognize the sentiment, or feel the reverence, how if between you and your parents some little cause of coldness arise, she will charm you back to honour your father and your mother, even though they are not particularly genial to her: well, if you win that sort of girl as your wife think you have got a treasure. You have won a woman to whom Heaven has given the two best attributes,--intense feeling of love, intense sense of duty. What, my dear lady reader, I say of one sex, I say of another, though in a less degree; because a girl who marries becomes of her husband’s family, and the man does not become of his wife’s. Still I distrust the depth of any man’s love to a woman, if he does not feel a great degree of tenderness (and forbearance where differences arise) for her parents. But the wife must not so put them in the foreground as to make the husband think he is cast in the cold of the shadow. Pardon this intolerable length of digression, dear reader: it is not altogether a digression, for it belongs to my tale that you should clearly understand the sort of girl that is personified in Cecilia Travers. “What has become of Kenelm?” asked Lady Glenalvon. “I wish I could tell you,” answered Sir Peter. “He wrote me word that he was going forth on rambles into ‘fresh woods and pastures new,’ perhaps for some weeks. I have not had a word from him since.” “You make me uneasy,” said Lady Glenalvon. “I hope nothing can have happened to him: he cannot have fallen ill.” Cecilia stops her work, and looks up wistfully. “Make your mind easy,” said Travers with a laugh; “I am in this secret. He has challenged the champion of England, and gone into the country to train.” “Very likely,” said Sir Peter, quietly: “I should not be in the least surprised; should you, Miss Travers?” “I think it more probable that Mr. Chillingly is doing some kindness to others which he wishes to keep concealed.” Sir Peter was pleased with this reply, and drew his chair nearer to Cecilia’s. Lady Glenalvon, charmed to bring those two together, soon rose and took leave. Sir Peter remained nearly an hour talking chiefly with Cecilia, who won her way into his heart with extraordinary ease; and he did not quit the house till he had engaged her father, Mrs. Campion, and herself to pay him a week’s visit at Exmundham, towards the end of the London season, which was fast approaching.