It will be recollected that Mr. Osborne, the curate, ended very suddenly, and with no small amount of heat and displeasure, that walk with Florence Plowden which had so nearly decided the whole colour of his life. He had fallen in love (as people say--and, indeed, it is as good a phrase as any, for it is often by no means a voluntary action) with the Rector’s daughter in spite of himself. It was so perfectly _banal_ and commonplace a thing to do; the sort of thing looked for by everybody; so suitable, that bugbear of youth; so exactly what might--except by his own ambitious relations, who thought him worthy of a loftier fate--have been expected, that the young man had resisted almost fiercely the tide of being which led him to that commonplace conclusion. But yet, when there is fate in it, what is the use of struggling? Florence Plowden was, Mr. Osborne thought, the prettiest, the most delightful and attractive of all the girls in Watcham--more than that, of all the girls he had ever seen. I do not know that this idea was justified by universal consent. Many people gave the palm in respect to good looks to Emmy, and, indeed, neither of them was at all up to the level of many of the girls from London who came down during the boating season, or of Dora Wade, for example, who was the belle of the county. However, the fact that this opinion was by no means universal did not affect the certainty of the curate, who had a very high idea of his own judgment, and, in fact, was better pleased that it should not chime in with other people’s, which was the last thing in the world he wished to do. He was a young man who was very well connected, and to lift his eyes even to Dora Wade would scarcely have been beyond his pretensions. But the mere fact that she was the acknowledged beauty was enough to make that pursuit unlikely to Edward Osborne. The _banalité_ of falling in love with his Rector’s daughter was bad enough, but it would have been nothing in comparison with the downright vulgarity of falling in love with the beauty who had, as it were, signposts put up all round her to indicate her position as the Queen of Hearts. Edward Osborne would have died rather than follow these indications. They convinced him instead that she was not fair at all, but a most matter-of-fact and commonplace Blowsibella, whose radiant complexion was of the mere dairymaid order, and meant nothing but high health and good digestion--good enough things in their way, but altogether devoid of romance, and of any attraction which could dominate a highly trained and fastidious spirit like himself. At first, when he came to Watcham, he would have also said that the attributes of a Rector’s daughter, the delightful good young woman of the parish, acquainted with all the poor people and their wants, and occupied with clothing clubs, penny banks, sewing classes, and mothers’ meetings, were also the very last things that would attract a young philanthropist of