"Papa, do not be ill-natured. Why should not Miss Altifiorla be married as well as another?" "In the first place, my dear," said Mrs. Forrester, "because I understand that the lady has always expressed herself as being in favour of a single life." "I go beyond that," said the Dean, "and maintain that any single life would be preferable to a marriage with Miss Altifiorla." "Considering that she is my friend, papa, I think that you are very unkind." "But who is to be the gentleman?" asked her mother. "Ah! there's the question! Why don't you guess?" Then Mrs. Dean did name three or four of the most unpromising unmarried elderly gentlemen in Exeter, and the Dean, in that spirit of satire against his own order which is common among clergymen, suggested an old widowed Minor Canon, who was in the habit of chanting the Litany. "You are none of you near the mark. You ought to come nearer home." "Nearer home?" said Mrs. Dean with a look of discomfort in her face. "Yes, mamma. A great deal nearer home." "It can't be your Uncle Septimus," said the Dean. Now Uncle Septimus was the unmarried brother of old Mr. Thorne, and was regarded by all the Thorne family as a perfect model of an unselfish, fine old lovable gentleman. "Good gracious, no!" said Mrs. Thorne. "What a horrible idea! Fancy Uncle Septimus doomed to pass his life in company with Miss Altifiorla! The happy man in question is--Sir Francis Geraldine." "No!" said Mrs. Hippesley, jumping from her seat. "It is impossible," said the Dean, who, though he greatly disliked his brother-in-law, still thought something of the family into which he had married, and thoroughly despised Miss Altifiorla. "I do not think that Sir Francis could be so silly as that." "It cannot be," said Mrs. Hippesley. "What has the young lady done to make it impossible?" asked Mrs. Forrester. "Nothing on earth," said Mrs. Thorne. "She is my special friend and is in my opinion a great deal more than worthy of my uncle Francis. Only papa, who dislikes them both, would like to make it out that the two of them are going to cut their own throats each by marrying the other. I wish papa could have heard the way in which she said that he would have to marry them,--unless the Bishop should like to come forward and perform the ceremony." "I shall do nothing of the kind," said the Dean angrily. "If you had heard," continued his daughter, "all that she had to say about the family name and the family property, and the family grandeur generally, you would have thought her the most becoming young woman in the country to be the future Lady Geraldine." "I wish you wouldn't talk of it, my dear," said Mrs. Hippesley. "We shall have to talk of it, and had better become used to it among ourselves. I don't suppose that Miss Altifiorla has invented the story out of her own head. She would not say that she was engaged to marry my uncle if it were not true."