In person, this humble heiress to countless thousands was quite sufficiently attractive to have been loved--as all women in her position naturally desire to be--for herself alone. Her features were not regular, nor can her eyes be described as either large or “liquid;” but her figure was fine, her complexion good, her teeth white, and her _tout ensemble_ decidedly effective. She worshipped Arthur Vavasour with a devotion which was alike unmerited and inexpedient. At Rome,--where he first became acquainted with the millionaire English _mees_, at whose feet penniless princes with titles dating from the days of the Tribunes laid their pedigrees humbly down, and where the money of the Manchester warehouseman proved the “open sesame” to the highest and the most exclusive society,--Arthur Vavasour had taken a high place amongst the many aspirants for Miss Duberly’s favourable notice. He was his mother’s son, and that mother, at present in possession of an income of some thirty thousand pounds per annum, must, in a very few years (for the particulars of the Earl of Gillingham’s will were in the world very generally known), abdicate--or rather, be very unpleasantly deposed in favour of her eldest son. With such prospects as these, it was impossible to attribute mercenary motives to that handsome, agreeable _pretendant_; and that Mr. Vavasour could be thinking of marrying for money was an idea that never once presented itself, either to Mr. Duberly or his daughter. It was pleasant to believe that the attentions of one in Mr. Vavasour’s position must of necessity be so purely (as was patent to the world) disinterested. To Sophy, who had been duly warned against the mercenary nature of all human motives, the conviction that Arthur was an exception to the general rule was especially delightful. After all that she had heard, and read, and seen--after the raids by impecunious aristocrats into the regions where the richer ten thousand guarded their well-earned gold, of which she had more than once been herself the destined victim--what wonder that this middle-class young lady, who was not (what girl of any promise is?) without her small ambitions, should have seen in Arthur Vavasour the realisation of all her fondest dreams, her highest aspirations? She made no secret of her preference. An indulged and petted only child, Sophia Duberly had never known the necessity, scarcely even the advisableness, of sometimes keeping her feelings to herself; and so it followed that Arthur knew full well, long before the avowal had been made in words, that the rich heiress loved him.