announced, the dream of knighthood or a baronetcy is to be found
under various municipal nightcaps, so the news in question raised a floating
indeterminate vision of marriage in several well-bred imaginations.
    The news was that Diplow Hall, Sir Hugo Mallinger's place, which had for a
couple of years turned its white window-shutters in a painfully wall-eyed manner
on its fine elms and beeches, its lilied pool and grassy acres specked with
deer, was being prepared for a tenant, and was for the rest of the summer and
through the hunting season to be inhabited in a fitting style both as to house
and stable. But not by Sir Hugo himself: by his nephew Mr. Mallinger Grandcourt,
who was presumptive heir to the baronetcy, his uncle's marriage having produced
nothing but girls. Nor was this the only contingency with which fortune
flattered young Grandcourt, as he was pleasantly called; for while the chance of
the baronetcy came through his father, his mother had given a baronial streak to
his blood, so that if certain intervening persons slightly painted in the middle
distance died, he would become a baron and peer of this realm.
    It is the uneven allotment of nature that the male bird alone has the tuft,
but we have not yet followed the advice of hasty philosophers who would have us
copy nature entirely in these matters; and if Mr. Mallinger Grandcourt became a
baronet or a peer, his wife would share the title - which in addition to his
actual fortune was certainly a reason why that wife, being at present unchosen,
should be thought of by more than one person with sympathetic interest as a
woman sure to be well provided for.
    Some readers of this history will doubtless regard it as incredible that
people should construct matrimonial prospects on the mere report that a bachelor
of good fortune and possibilities was coming within reach, and will reject the
statement as a mere outflow of gall: they will aver that neither they nor their
first cousins have minds so unbridled; and that in fact this is not human
nature, which would know that such speculations might turn out to be fallacious,
and would therefore not entertain them. But, let it be observed, nothing is here
narrated of human nature generally: the history in its present stage concerns
only a few people in a corner of Wessex - whose reputation, however, was
unimpeached, and who, I am in the proud position of being able to state, were
all on visiting terms with persons of rank.
    There were the Arrowpoints, for example, in their beautiful place at
Quetcham: no one could attribute sordid