When Mr. Gordon Frere had been seen a few times riding with Miss Gould in the Row, and had been observed dancing with her an abnormal number of dances, his friends began to make remarks of the kind elegantly called "chaff" on the occurrences. It is not to be supposed, because they have not appeared in these pages, that there were not many aspirants to the hand and fortune of the shipowner's heiress. Their name, indeed, was legion; but they had all fared equally ill, and not one of the number had any reason to feel himself personally aggrieved by the evident progress of Frere in Miss Gould's good graces. So the chorus was rather congratulatory, the aspirants were good-natured in the main; and though each would have been delighted to secure Miss Gould's fortune for himself, they all agreed that Frere was a good fellow, though an idle dog, who would never make any hand of himself, and it would be a doosid good thing for him. As for Hester, though she made no unfeminine or unladylike advances, she was far too sensible to risk her happiness on punctilio. "I am not the first woman he will have loved, if he ever comes to love me," she thought; "but he is the only man I ever have loved, I ever can love, and that makes all the difference." So she treated him from the first with undisguised though unostentatious preference; and, fully acknowledging to herself that her heart's desire and prayer was to become his wife, never endangered her chance by the slightest coquetry or insincerity. The light and facile nature of Gordon Frere was exactly calculated to insure the success of such a policy, which, however, was rather the instinct of Hester Gould's good sense. He liked her, he thought her handsome and clever. "Not a star of beauty, not a queen of grace and loveliness, like her, you know," said Mr. Frere to a friend of his with whom, in times which seemed very long past now, he had been wont to take counsel, and who listened to him with a gravely-amused expression of countenance and much internal satisfaction--"nothing of that kind, but a real nice girl. As sensible as a judge, sir!--a long way more so than some of them, I believe--and really fond of me. Don't think me a coxcomb, Charley, or an ass, as I was before. This is quite another case; and, by Jove, I am as sure as that I am sitting here in this everlasting old glory-hole, where I don't believe the very dust ever changes or blows away, that if I asked Miss Gould to-morrow to marry me, she would say yes."