corners, and persisting for a considerable time in this quest. But whether he ever came the length of proposing at all, or whether the young lady was engaged beforehand, or if she thought the prospect of making a suitable wife not good enough, I cannot say, and I doubt whether any one knows--except, of course, the parties immediately concerned. It is very clear, at all events, that it came to nothing. John did not altogether give it up, I fancy, for he went a great deal into society still, especially in that _avant saison_, which people who live in London declare to be the most enjoyable, and when it is supposed you can enjoy the best of company at your ease without the hurry and rush of the summer crowd. He would have been very glad, thankful, indeed, if he could have fallen in love. How absurd to think that any silly boy can do it, to whom it is probably nothing but a disadvantage and the silliest of pastimes, and that he, a reasonable man with a good income, and arrived at a time of life when it is becoming and rational to marry, could not do it, let him try as he would! There was something ludicrous in it, when you came to think, as well as something very depressing. Mothers who wanted a good position for their daughters divined him, and many of them were exceedingly civil to John, this man in search of a wife; and many of the young ladies themselves divined him, and with the half indignation, half mockery, appropriate to the situation, were some of them not unaverse to profit by it, and accordingly turned to him their worst side in the self-consciousness produced by that knowledge. And thus the second year turned round towards the wane, and John was farther from success than ever.