It is now time to speak of the lover himself, who has hitherto been but hinted at. We must say, in the first place, that there was nothing objectionable about Mr Winton. He was not poor, nor was he _roturier_. He was a well-bred English gentleman, of perfectly good though not exalted family. On the Continent he would have been said to belong to the _petite noblesse_. But after all it only wants an accession of fortune to make _la petite_ into _la grande noblesse_. He was as far descended as any prince (which, indeed, may be said for the most of us), and had ancestors reaching up into the darkness of the ages. At least he had the portraits of these ancestors hanging up in the hall at Winton House; and unless they had existed, how could they have had their portraits taken? which is an unanswerable argument. Winton House itself was but a small place, it is true; but when his Indian uncle died and left him all that money, it was immediately placed in Mr Winton’s power to make his house into a great one had he chosen; and for so rich a man to keep the old place intact was loyalty, or family pride, or at the worst eccentricity, and did by no means imply any shabbiness either of mind or means. To make up for this he had a very handsome house in town, and there was no doubt at all on the question that he was a rich man, and able to indulge his fancy as he pleased. He would have been a perfectly good match for Lady Germaine’s own daughter had she been old enough, or for Earl Binny’s young ladies, or for almost any girl in the county, excepting always Lady Jane. She was the one who was out of his sphere. It was perfectly well known that the Duke would not hear of any son-in-law whose rank, or at least whose family, was not equal to his own, and it had long been a foregone conclusion with society that it was very unlikely Lady Jane would ever marry at all. Perhaps had Mr Winton fully foreseen the position, he would have retired too, before, as people say, his feelings were too much interested. But it is to be feared that the idea did not occur to him until, unfortunately, it was too late.