"Why should she not marry him?" said the Vicar. "She is only a farmer's grand-daughter. We are nobody, you know." "But he is not of good character." "Oh, there is nothing more against him than there is against most young fellows. He will reform and be steady. Do you know anything special against him?" asked the Vicar. "Not actually against him; but just conceive, my dear friend, what a family to marry into! His father, I speak the plain truth, is a most disreputable, drunken old man, living in open sin with a gipsy woman of the worst character, by whom George Hawker has been brought up. What an atmosphere of vice! The young fellow himself is universally disliked, and distrusted too, all over the village. Can you forgive me for speaking so plain?" "There is no forgiveness necessary, my good friend;" said the Vicar. "I know how kind your intentions are. But I cannot bring myself to have a useless quarrel with my daughter merely because I happen to dislike the object of her choice. It would be quite a useless quarrel. She has always had her own way, and always will." "What does Miss Thornton say?" asked the Major. "Nothing, she never does say anything. She regards Hawker as Mary's accepted suitor; and though she may think him vulgar, she would sooner die than commit herself so far as to say so. She has been so long under others, and without an opinion save theirs, that she cannot form an opinion at all." They had turned and were walking home, when the Vicar, sticking his walking-cane upright in the grass, began again. "It is the most miserable and lamentable thing that ever took place in this world. Look at my sister again: what a delicate old maid she is! used to move and be respected, more than most governesses are, in the highest society in the land. There'll be a home for her when I die. Think of her living in the house with any of the Hawkers; and yet, sir, that woman's sense of duty is such that she'd die sooner than leave her niece. Sooner be burnt at the stake than go one inch out of the line of conduct she has marked out for herself." The Vicar judged his sister most rightly: we shall see that hereafter. "A man of determination and strength of character could have prevented it at the beginning, you would say. I dare say he might have; but I am not a man of determination and strength of character. I never was, and I never shall be." "Do you consider it in the light of a settled question, then," said the Major, "that your daughter should marry young Hawker?" "God knows. She will please herself. I spoke to her at first about encouraging him, and she began by laughing at me, and ended by making a scene whenever I spoke against him. I was at one time in hopes that she would have taken a fancy to young Stockbridge; but I fear I must have set her against him by praising him too much. It wants a woman, you know, to manage those sort of things." "It does, indeed."