Ada's frame of mind at this time was one of thorough content and satisfaction. She had always taken life smoothly and with a certain ease, perhaps inherited from her aunt, and she could manage either to slip round its little angles and roughnesses, or else to exert a faculty of not perceiving or comprehending them, to a really remarkable extent. She was so well satisfied with herself that it never appeared possible that others should not share the satisfaction to the full; and this armour, call it amiability or self-complacency or what you will, made her absolutely impervious to the darts which prick and goad more thin-skinned victims. Even to good-natured Mrs Bennett it had sometimes become apparent that Anthony was not so ardent a lover as might have been expected, that he expressed no anxiety about the wedding-day, that he was often late in coming, and not infrequently stayed away when there was no reason to account for his absence; but Ada was never ruffled by such reflections. It was a matter of course that Anthony should be most happy when he was by her side, and if he were obliged to stay away, she expressed a little contented pity, and smiled, worked, and talked, with a serene absence of misgivings. Hers was not a nature to be quickened into rare moments of deep delight; Anthony was simply one of the things which had been sent to make her life what she had always expected; it was a good match, as her uncle had repeatedly assured her, they would have money, comforts, an excellent position; but she had never been troubled with any doubt that in due time all these would naturally come to her, and everything seemed only moving in the sequence that was to be expected. Of any unfulfilled dream, or sense of dissatisfaction in the relations between herself and Anthony, she was unconscious, for the reason that it never entered her mind to conceive of herself as other than she was.