Finally, as a compensation and triumphant conclusion of the matter, these gentlemen—Lady Bell’s most considerate and indulgent friends—were guilty of proposing in their own minds, for the innocent girl’s comfort, that she would in all probability be left a young widow,—if she played her cards well, a rich young widow,—while she had still plenty of time and opportunity to please her taste in a second husband. But Lady Bell was utterly incredulous, dumb-foundered, adverse, obdurate, only too vehemently so to begin with. Certainly, she had often heard of such marriages as that which she was required to make. Ay, and she had heard them insisted on as a portionless girl’s simple, solemn duty. While, on the other hand, she had known all marriages contracted rashly, impudently and in defiance of friends, characterized by no less an authority than Lady Lucie Penruddock as acts of gross impropriety and disgraceful insubordination, which ought to compromise, and did compromise, a young woman fatally, and bring upon her punishment in proportion to the offence. Lady Bell was not able to persuade herself that her former idol, Lady Lucie, would have been on her side in this question. Lady Bell’s poor heart sunk like lead when she took Lady Lucie’s opinions into consideration. She dared not think of Lady Lucie during the tumult and rebellion of these May days at St. Bevis’s. But through all the girl’s elaborately artificial training, there was the young heart beating fast and warm with true instincts of what meetness was, of what sympathy meant, of what “the great passion” might prove. In the remote background of all Lady Bell’s girlishly brave proud schemes and undertakings to keep up her studies and gentlewoman’s accomplishments, to improve herself, to spend her time not amiss, even amidst the neglect and disorder of St. Bevis’s, there had hovered always the bright sweet hope of deliverance and a deliverer. In Lady Lucie’s set Lady Bell had not been without hearing of the young loves, consecrated by tragedy, of such a couple as Lord and Lady Tavistock. She had witnessed with her own eyes “proper” young pairs rejoicing in their real union, entering on life with every assurance of the closest friendship, the tenderest intimacy till death should them part. With her rapidly budding womanly instincts, with the fervour of her youthful recollections, Lady Bell absolutely revolted at being wedded to Mr. Trevor without her will being consulted. The deliverer whom she had dimly anticipated in a glamour and glory of romance was not a bull-necked, stout-bodied, short-legged squire of sixty and upwards, in a brown coat and scarlet vest. Lady Bell had owed to Squire Trevor the trifling boon of his having walked in the same direction as herself at Brooklands. Oh! how she wished she had not been so perverse as to weary of the strutting and speechifying of Lord Thorold and Miss Babbage, if sitting still would have prevented this catastrophe!