Now Miss Angela would not condescend to this abrupt change of front; for, for one thing, she was a zealous student of moral sensation, and, for another, she was conscious of maturing past her first bloom. She desired to keep her rose-coloured spectacles, only the rims must be of gold. In short, she was feeling that, were the picturesqueness of life her object, she must seek to change her outlook while her charms remained sufficiently inviting to procure her a new prosperous coign of vantage. She had played with romance. Now, for the time being, it must be subordinated to questions of business. Foremost in this connection presented itself the figure of her inscrutable neighbour of “Delsrop.” He, for a period, had slept without a rival in the pupils of her pale eyes. He had satisfied her most delicate sensibilities--for a period. Gradually, however, was effected that change in her point of view. She came to question in herself, not the personality of the interesting stranger so much as his eligibility. And here she had to acknowledge herself at sea, and to own that melancholy and mystery were best applied to matrimony when justified by substantial dividends. Moreover, there was the matter of position. The case of her almost-namesake, Mrs. Kauffmann, was not so ancient to men’s memories as that she could afford to discount its significance as legendary. Indeed, she had a mental picture of herself as a little prim-set maid of five or so, walking, her hand in her father’s, through a suite of magnificent rooms, the walls of which, all gorgeously upholstered, were hung with canvases in such quantity as to spoil, she thought, the pretty effect of the hangings; and she remembered how her father--a lord of Plympton Manor in Devonshire, where was once a school-master with a famous son--had stopped and presented his hand to a little dapper gentleman--who wore a plum-coloured coat, and who had a scar on his lip and very squeezed-up eyes--and a courteous bow to a pale and melancholy lady who stood by the little gentleman’s side. And the lady had smiled upon the baby-girl and had asked her name; and when told it the smile had vanished, and she had said in a queer un-English voice, “Gott bewahre. Rechristen the mädchen if you wish her happiness.” And at that the two men had looked flushed and awkward, as men are wont to look over some suppressed meaning that invites impossible sympathy.