about it all. Never let it be mentioned when he is gone.«
    »No, papa. But I would not be like Gwendolen for anything - to have people
fall in love with me so. It is very dreadful.«
    Anna dared not say that she was disappointed at not being allowed to go to
the colonies with Rex; but that was her secret feeling, and she often afterwards
went inwardly over the whole affair, saying to herself, »I should have done with
going out, and gloves, and crinoline, and having to talk when I am taken to
dinner - and all that!«
    I like to mark the time, and connect the course of individual lives with the
historic stream, for all classes of thinkers. This was the period when the
broadening of gauge in crinolines seemed to demand an agitation for the general
enlargement of churches, ball-rooms, and vehicles. But Anna Gascoigne's figure
would only allow the size of skirt manufactured for young ladies of fourteen.
 

                                   Chapter IX

 I'll tell thee, Berthold, what men's hopes are like:
 A silly child that, quivering with joy,
 Would cast its little mimic fishing-line
 Baited with loadstone for a bowl of toys
 In the salt ocean.
 
Eight months after the arrival of the family at Offendene, that is to say in the
end of the following June, a rumour was spread in the neighbourhood which to
many persons was matter of exciting interest. It had no reference to the results
of the American war, but it was one which touched all classes within a certain
circuit round Wanchester: the corn-factors, the brewers, the horse-dealers, and
saddlers, all held it a laudable thing, and one which was to be rejoiced in on
abstract grounds, as showing the value of an aristocracy in a free country like
England; the blacksmith in the hamlet of Diplow felt that a good time had come
round; the wives of labouring men hoped their nimble boys of ten or twelve would
be taken into employ by the gentlemen in livery; and the farmers about Diplow
admitted, with a tincture of bitterness and reserve, that a man might now again
perhaps have an easier market or exchange for a rick of old hay or a waggon-load
of straw. If such were the hopes of low persons not in society, it may be easily
inferred that their betters had better reasons for satisfaction, probably
connected with the pleasures of life rather than its business. Marriage,
however, must be considered as coming under both heads; and just as when a visit
of majesty is