About a year before that dinner-party at which May Cheffington had made her _début_ in Oldchester society, Mrs. Hadlow had begun to think it probable that Theodore Bransby might wish to marry her daughter, and to consider the desirability of his doing so. On the whole she did not disapprove the prospect. Constance was very handsome, but she was also very poor. Her ambition might not be satisfied by a match with Martin Bransby's son; but on the other hand, Theodore was a young man of good abilities, and apt to rise in the world. Moreover, he had sufficient property of his own to facilitate his rising--a little ballast of that sort being as useful in the _melée_ of this world as the lead in a toy tumbler, and enabling a man, if not to strike the stars with his sublime head, at least to keep right side uppermost. Certainly Theodore had appeared much attracted by Miss Hadlow. Not only her beauty but her self-assertion approved itself to him; for a man's wife should be able to justify his taste; and there would be no distinction in winning a woman whose meekness made it doubtful whether she could have had the heart to say "No" to an inferior suitor. They had been playfellows in childhood, but school and Cambridge had separated them. But after Theodore began to read for the Bar, and, during the two last vacations, which he had spent chiefly at home, a great intimacy had sprung up between the young people. Theodore's frequent visits to the old house in College Quad did not pass unobserved. One or two persons thought his partiality for the Hadlows--especially when contrasted with the lukewarm politeness he bestowed on other families, such as Raynes the brewer, or the Burtons who lived in a park, and had had nothing to do with retail for two generations--was creditable to Theodore's heart. "He was not one to neglect old friends," said they, candidly confessing at the same time that it was more than they should have expected of him. But the majority felt sure that nothing short of being in love with Constance Hadlow could induce young Bransby to prefer the canon's old-fashioned parlour to Mrs. Raynes's red and gold drawing-room, or the Burtons' æsthetic upholstery. Oldchester folks did not guess that Theodore intended to frequent a style of society in which neither the Rayneses nor the Burtons would be able to make any figure, nor did they know that he set a considerable value on Mrs. Hadlow's connections. That lady had been a Miss Rivers, and her family ranked among the oldest landed gentry in the kingdom. There were not many Oldchester magnates to whom Theodore Bransby thought it worth while to be more than coolly civil. Mr. Bragg was an exception, but then Mr. Bragg was a man of very great wealth; and as mere size is held in certain cases to be an element of grandeur, so money, Theodore thought, is capable in certain cases of inspiring veneration--that is to say, when there is enough of it.