with an accident and be rescued by a man of property. He wished his niece well,
and he meant her to be seen to advantage in the best society of the
neighbourhood.
    Her uncle's intention fell in perfectly with Gwendolen's own wishes. But let
no one suppose that she also contemplated a brilliant marriage as the direct end
of her witching the world with her grace on horseback, or with any other
accomplishment. That she was to be married some time or other she would have
felt obliged to admit; and that her marriage would not be of a middling kind,
such as most girls were contented with, she felt quietly, unargumentatively
sure. But her thoughts never dwelt on marriage as the fulfilment of her
ambition; the dramas in which she imagined herself a heroine were not wrought up
to that close. To be very much sued or hopelessly sighed for as a bride was
indeed an indispensable and agreeable guarantee of womanly power; but to become
a wife and wear all the domestic fetters of that condition, was on the whole a
vexatious necessity. Her observation of matrimony had inclined her to think it
rather a dreary state, in which a woman could not do what she liked, had more
children than were desirable, was consequently dull, and became irrevocably
immersed in humdrum. Of course marriage was social promotion; she could not look
forward to a single life; but promotions have sometimes to be taken with bitter
herbs - a peerage will not quite do instead of leadership to the man who meant
to lead; and this delicate-limbed sylph of twenty meant to lead. For such
passions dwell in feminine breasts also. In Gwendolen's, however, they dwelt
among strictly feminine furniture, and had no disturbing reference to the
advancement of learning or the balance of the constitution; her knowledge being
such as with no sort of standing-room or length of lever could have been
expected to move the world. She meant to do what was pleasant to herself in a
striking manner; or rather, whatever she could do so as to strike others with
admiration and get in that reflected way a more ardent sense of living, seemed
pleasant to her fancy.
    »Gwendolen will not rest without having the world at her feet,« said Miss
Merry, the meek governess: - hyperbolical words which have long come to carry
the most moderate meanings; for who has not heard of private persons having the
world at their feet in the shape of some half-dozen items of flattering regard
generally known in a genteel suburb? And words could hardly be too wide or vague
to indicate the prospect