Long before the ten days were at an end, it was an established fact, plain to the whole household, that Squire Trevor, who in these days of early marriages might have been Lady Bell Etheredge’s grandfather, was paying court to Lady Bell, and that he was only tarrying so long to have the connection settled. Nay, possibly, as the affairs of the family were in a desperate condition, the family might dispense with ceremony. Mr. Trevor might propose to marry Lady Bell off hand, since he had no time to lose, and in order to relieve himself from the trouble of another journey of several days, when he was just getting in his hay crop. In that case Mr. Trevor might carry away Lady Bell with him, and leave her to fix upon and lay in her marriage suits, by his generosity, at Trevor Court. Such marriages were arranged by old cronies, fathers and guardians, and run up in a trice, without time being granted to make mouths at them. Young lads were sent for from college, girls were called from their tambour-frames, even from their dolls, and barely informed before they went into the presence of the parson, who was always at hand, that it was to decide summarily their fate they were thus brought on the scene of action. Lady Bell was the last person in the household at St. Bevis’s to learn what was in store for her. By the time she learned it, every preliminary had been agreed upon, the marriage contract was drawn out, the day all but named. Mr. Godwin had answered in the affirmative for his niece, Mrs. Die was perfectly indifferent. Mrs. Kitty was indifferent and malicious at the same time, because this poor upstart fiddle-faddle Lady Bell was to pass beyond Mrs. Kitty’s authority, quitting St. Bevis’s with a bride’s honours—such as they were, of which Mrs. Kitty’s Amazon queen, Mrs. Die, had been monstrously defrauded in her day. Even Mr. Sneyd and Mr. Greenwood looked on the marriage of Squire Trevor with Lady Bell, for the most part, favourably. What little rue the men felt was chiefly on their own account; for her sake they were inclined, on due reflection, to welcome the match as not altogether out of course, and perhaps the best thing that could be hoped for Lady Bell. St. Bevis’s had not so fair a reputation, or such a promise of dowries for young ladies that it should draw wooers to Lady Bell. Of such wooers as would risk an association with Squire Godwin—a partnership in bets, an opposite book at Newmarket, or a night with him at cards—how many even of the likeliest young fellows would present characters half so honest for husbands as that of Squire Trevor, and rent-rolls by many degrees so unencumbered as that of Trevor Court?