But Mary told them that she had been detained talking to Mr. Temple, whom she had met upon the hill, and they were glad that she had seen him, little devising all that parting interview had comprised, or they might not have been quite so well satisfied with the part their niece had taken therein. For it being their chief anxiety to see this last remaining niece well settled in life, now that the critical and uncertain circumstances of the family affairs rendered some secure provision so desirable, and their matter of fact perceptions leading them to regard Mr. Temple in the light of a very exemplary clergyman, of comfortable means--and judging from his gentlemanly carriage and superior conversation, more than from his own profession, or other guarantee--of good family and birth; they had often thought, and even ventured to express in words to each other, what a good husband he would make for their quiet Mary, whose tastes and qualities--judging from the same simple-minded rule of observation, which never saw ought beyond the surface of appearance or boundary of circumstances--the good old couple interpreted, were exactly those befitting her for the vocation to be thereby entailed upon her, namely, that of clergyman's wife, an inference which we have seen from our heroine's own confessions that evening, to have been by no means correctly drawn. Mary Seaham's four sisters had been severally disposed of in marriage, since by the death of their father, the charge of the orphan daughters had devolved upon them. The eldest in every way--as the eldest daughter of a family is often seen to do--most to the entire approval and satisfaction of her friends. The superior advantages of a girl's introduction into the world, under the care and superintendence of sensible and estimable parents, had distinguished her opening career above those of her other sisters, and she had been engaged before her father's death to Lord Everingham--whom she subsequently married--a nobleman of high worth and distinction, at this time holding a considerable post in India. Alice, the second daughter, a few years after, became the wife of Mr. Gillespie, a Scotch lawyer, with whom she had become acquainted whilst visiting some friends in Scotland, and he being a widower, with children already provided for her care, to whose number she had duly added, her's had proved no sinecure undertaking. But laudably had she fulfilled the destiny appointed her, devoting herself in her still youthful years without a murmur or backward look of regret to the life of comparative drudgery which this choice of a husband had entailed upon her--a course of life to which sneerers may be ready to apply the slighting axiom of Iago, "To suckle fools and chronicle small beer;"