Bella French was not very nice in his
eyes; but she was quiet, he thought, and it might be possible to live
with her. Nevertheless, he told himself over and over again that the
manner in which unmarried men with incomes were set upon by ladies in
want of husbands was very disgraceful to the country at large. That
mission to Natal which had once been offered to him would have had
charms for him now, of which he had not recognised the force when he
rejected it.
'Do you think that he ever was really engaged to her?' Dorothy said to
her aunt. Dorothy was now living in a seventh heaven of happiness,
writing love-letters to Brooke Burgess every other day, and devoting to
this occupation a number of hours of which she ought to have been
ashamed; making her purchases for her wedding with nothing, however, of
the magnificence of a Camilla, but discussing everything with her aunt,
who urged her on to extravagances which seemed beyond the scope of her
own economical ideas; settling, or trying to settle, little
difficulties which perplexed her somewhat, and wondering at her own
career.
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