About this time, however, it certainly began to enter into Lady Jane’s head that it is a general thing to marry, and that this is the way in which most women solve the problem of their life. Perhaps because of the “offers” she had received: perhaps because she had met at Lady Germaine’s, quite promiscuously, on one of the many occasions on which she went there, a--gentleman. She had met a great many gentlemen there and elsewhere before; but on the particular occasion in question, she had gone by accident, without design, and with no expectation of meeting any one. Fate thus lies in wait for us, round a corner, when we think of it least. The gentleman was nobody in particular. He had never been meant to meet the Duke’s daughter. Indeed, had Lady Germaine had but the slightest prevision of what was coming, she would have locked him into a closet, or tripped him over into the river, rather than permitted such a thing to happen in her house. But she did not know any more than other mortals, and the train was laid by the Fates without any sort of connivance on the part of any human creature. They all fell blindly, stupidly, accidentally into the net. It was perhaps then, we say, when Lady Jane declined, either by her own will or her father’s, her other matrimonial prospects, or perhaps when she met the aforesaid gentleman, that it first really occurred to this high and visionary maiden to take into consideration that which is the leading incident in the lives of most women, the event which decides the question whether their lives shall be lonely and in great measure objectless, or busy and full of interest and occupation. Generally it is at a very early age that girls first approach this question. But Lady Jane had been a stately little person even in her cradle. She had not chosen to be kissed and caressed as most children are. She had been gently proud and reticent through all her girlhood. She had no youthful intimates to breathe into her mind this suggestion--no girl-friend about to be married to initiate her into the joyous fuss, the importance, the applauses and presents, the general commotion which every wedding produces. She had, indeed, been present at a marriage, but never at one which touched her at all in her immediate circle. So that Lady Jane was nearly eight-and-twenty when it occurred to her as possible that she too might marry and carry out in her own person the universal lot. At first she had been shocked at herself, and had driven the thought out of her mind with a delicacy which cannot but be called false, though she was not conscious of its fictitious character. But the idea came back: it caught her at unawares, it came over her sometimes with soft, delicious suggestions. When she met a young mother with her children, a sigh that was as soft as the west wind in spring would come out of Lady Jane’s heart. How happy was that woman! how delightful all the cares that beset