only a shabby old coronet to offer her, and Oatley was a bag of money. Poor Fanny! I don’t think she liked it any more than I did; but what can a fellow do when circumstances are dead against him?’ That was how it happened in ordinary life. Even when a man was as fond of a woman as he could be, still he must take other matters into account,--how they were to live, what provision was to be made for the future, and a hundred other details about connexions and position and the like. Therefore, whatever your feelings might be, Frank argued with himself, marriage was always a matter of mixed motives; and to reject a rich alliance which had nothing particularly disagreeable in it, or indeed to put aside the thought of it, as if marriage was not one of the things to be calculated about and carefully considered in all its bearings, was simple folly. He had never thought so deeply on any subject, his profession and general circumstances being rather against any very lively exercise of his mental faculties. This question of Nelly Rich cost him two days’ painful deliberation. To have her and to suspend his negotiations about India and the marching regiment, and to strike out a shorter path instead to wealth, and ease, and comfort--or not to have her! It even interfered with his sleep, though he was so young and healthy. It was not a matter on which he could consult any one, and this increased the difficulty tenfold. Even as to Edgbaston, though he was so good a fellow, Frank had sufficient delicacy to feel that if he should hereafter marry a woman about whom he had thus consulted his friend, he could never allow that friend to enter the house in which his wife should be supreme. If she ever became his wife it would be indispensable that no living creature should know how he had once questioned and doubted. Frank might be susceptible to worldly motives, as most people are; but he was full of honourable feeling all the same. He might marry money, but no one should ever be able so much as to hint to the woman who brought it that it was not her he loved best. He would do all a man could to love her if he did marry her; and he would breathe his secret to no one. And thus he turned his difficulty over and over in his mind, and denied himself the comfort of friendly counsel on the subject, which indeed was as high an evidence of the young man’s honourable feeling as could well be desired.