Her ignorance in this
matter arose, not so much from inexperience, as from too large an
experience of the travesty of the real thing; an experience which
hindered her from recognising love itself, now that love in its most
ideal form was drawing near.
Jane had not come through a dozen seasons without receiving nearly a
dozen proposals of marriage. An heiress, independent of parents and
guardians, of good blood and lineage, a few proposals of a certain
type were inevitable. Middle-aged men--becoming bald and grey; tired
of racketing about town; with beautiful old country places and an
unfortunate lack of the wherewithal to keep them up--proposed to the
Honourable Jane Champion in a business-like way, and the Honourable
Jane looked them up and down, and through and through, until they
felt very cheap, and then quietly refused them, in an equally
business-like way.
Two or three nice boys, whom she had pulled out of scrapes and set
on their feet again after hopeless croppers, had thought, in a wave
of maudlin gratitude, how good it would be for a fellow always to
have her at hand to keep him straight and tell him what he ought to
do, don't you know? and--er--well, yes--pay his debts, and be a sort
of mother-who-doesn't scold kind of person to him; and had caught
hold of her kind hand, and implored her to marry them.
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