 man who admires a fair girl should not be enamoured of her,
and even that every man who is enamoured should not necessarily declare himself.
There are various refined shapes in which the price of corn, known to be a
potent cause in this relation, might, if inquired into, show why a young lady,
perfect in person, accomplishments, and costume, has not the trouble of
rejecting many offers; and nature's order is certainly benignant in not obliging
us one and all to be desperately in love with the most admirable mortal we have
ever seen. Gwendolen, we know, was far from holding that supremacy in the minds
of all observers. Besides, it was but a poor eight months since she had come to
Offendene, and some inclinations become manifest slowly, like the sunward
creeping of plants.
    In face of this fact that not one of the eligible young men already in the
neighbourhood had made Gwendolen an offer, why should Mr. Grandcourt be thought
of as likely to do what they had left undone?
    Perhaps because he was thought of as still more eligible; since a great deal
of what passes for likelihood in the world is simply the reflex of a wish. Mr.
and Mrs. Arrowpoint, for example, having no anxiety that Miss Harleth should
make a brilliant marriage, had quite a different likelihood in their minds.
 

                                   Chapter X

 1st Gent:
 What woman should be? Sir, consult the taste
 Of marriageable men. This planet's store
 In iron, cotton, wool, or chemicals -
 All matter rendered to our plastic skill,
 Is wrought in shapes responsive to demand:
 The market's pulse makes index high or low,
 By rule sublime. Our daughters must be wives,
 And to be wives must be what men will choose:
 Men's taste is women's test. You mark the phrase?
 'Tis good, I think? - the sense well winged and poised
 With t's and s's.
2d Gent:
 Nay, but turn it round:
 Give us the test of taste. A fine menu -
 Is it to-day what Roman epicures
 Insisted that a gentleman must eat
 To earn the dignity of dining well?
 
Brackenshaw Park, where the Archery Meeting was held, looked out from its gentle
heights far over the neighbouring valley to the outlying eastern downs and the
broad slow rise of cultivated country hanging like a vast curtain towards the
west. The castle, which stood on the highest platform of the clustered hills,
was built of rough-hewn limestone, full of lights and shadows made by the dark
dust of lichens
