Life may be compared to a gamut of music:  there are seven notes from our birth to our marriage; and thus may we run up the first octave—­milk, sugar-plums, apples, cricket, cravat, gun, horse; then comes the wife, a da capo to a new existence, which is to continue until the whole diapason is gone through.  Lord Aveleyn ran up his scale like others before him.

“Why do you not marry, my dear Frank?” said the dowager Lady Aveleyn, one day, when a thick fog debarred her son of his usual pastime.

“Why, mother, I have no objection to marry; and I suppose I must, one of these days, as a matter of duty:  but I really am very difficult to please; and if I were to make a bad choice, you know a wife is not like this gun, which will go off when I please.”

“But still, my dear Frank, there are many very eligible matches to be made just now.”

“I do not doubt it, madam, but pray who are they?”

“Why, Miss Riddlesworth—­”

“A very pretty girl, and I am told a large fortune.  But let me hear the others first.”

“Clara Beauchamp, well connected, and a very sweet girl.”

“Granted also, for anything I know to the contrary.  Have you more on your list?”

“Certainly.  Emily Riddlesdale; not much fortune, but very highly connected indeed.  Her brother, Lord Riddlesdale, is a man of great influence.”

“Her want of money is no object, my dear mother, and the influence of her brother no inducement; I covet neither.  I grant you that she is a very nice girl.  Proceed.”

“Why, Frank, one would think that you were a sultan with his handkerchief.  There is Lady Selina Armstrong.”

“Well, she is a very fine girl, and talks well.”

“There is Harriet Butler, who has just come out.”

“I saw her at the last ball we were at—­a very pretty creature.”

“Lady Jemima Calthorpe.”

“Not very good-looking, but clever and agreeable.”

“There is Louisa Manners, who is very much admired.”

“I admire her very much myself.”

“Well, Frank, you have exhausted my catalogue.  There is not one I have mentioned who is not unexceptionable, and whom I would gladly embrace as a daughter-in-law.  You are now turned of forty, my dear son, and must make up your mind to have heirs to the title and estates.  I am, however, afraid that your admiration is so general, that you will be puzzled in your choice.”

“I will confess to you, my dearest mother, that I have many years thought of the necessity of taking to myself a wife, but have never yet had courage to decide.  I admit that if all the young women you have mentioned were what they appear to be, a man need not long hesitate in his choice; but the great difficulty is, that their real tempers and dispositions are not to be ascertained until it is too late.  Allow that I should attempt to discover the peculiar disposition of every one of them, what would be the