When, therefore, Lord Ellersville proposed to her, and was considered by her parents as an unexceptionable _parti_, young, handsome, rich, she accepted him calmly, dutifully, and without hesitation. She meant to love him, knowing it was right so to do, and she persuaded herself that she really did like him very much. In high life, romance is not the besetting sin of very young ladies. Their characters do not unfold, like Ondine; they do not find out they have a soul until it is sometimes too late. Matches, apparently the most worldly and heartless, are occasionally formed by those, in the recesses of whose hearts the warmest affections, the most disinterested feelings, are lying dormant. Often, very often, their minds are well regulated, their principles strong, and these affections, if they cannot find vent in love for their husbands, concentrate themselves on their children. But alas! too often also they lead to the most lamentable results. Lord Ellersville unfortunately was not formed to attach such a woman as Maria. He was devoted to field sports. In August he repaired to the moors to shoot grouse, from whence he only returned when partridge shooting commenced, and later in the season he went to Melton with a perfect stud of horses. This was not flattering to a young and lovely woman. Her vanity was mortified. In the spring he attended the House of Lords regularly, although he never spoke, and his vote merely served to strengthen the government majorities. Women are alive to fame of all kinds, and if her husband had distinguished himself, Lady Ellersville was one of those who would have lived upon his glories; for there was a fund of loftiness in her nature which would have enabled her to make pride in her husband supply the place of love for him. When with her, he was careless and indifferent; for having married at the instigation of his mother, in order that the honours of Ellersville might not become extinct, her principal claim upon his affection, or rather his consideration, ceased, when the young heir was snatched by death from its doting mother. There is something in maternity that opens the heart to all kindly emotions of every sort, and it was not till she lost her child, that Lady Ellersville first felt what a blank and cheerless existence was that of the unloved wife of an unloved husband. She then first owned to herself that she did not, could not, love the man to whom her fate was united, but that there did exist within her warm and ardent feelings which now must never be called forth.