a moderate fortune, that enabled him to retire, as you see, to study politics, the weather, and the art of conversation at his leisure.  Mr. Bridmain, in fact, quadragenarian bachelor as he was, felt extremely well pleased to receive his sister in her widowhood, and to shine in the reflected light of her beauty and title.  Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other.  Mr. Bridmain had put his neck under the yoke of his handsome sister, and though his soul was a very little one—­of the smallest description indeed—­he would not have ventured to call it his own.  He might be slightly recalcitrant now and then, as is the habit of long-eared pachyderms, under the thong of the fair Countess’s tongue; but there seemed little probability that he would ever get his neck loose.  Still, a bachelor’s heart is an outlying fortress that some fair enemy may any day take either by storm or stratagem; and there was always the possibility that Mr. Bridmain’s first nuptials might occur before the Countess was quite sure of her second.  As it was, however, he submitted to all his sister’s caprices, never grumbled because her dress and her maid formed a considerable item beyond her own little income of sixty pounds per annum, and consented to lead with her a migratory life, as personages on the debatable ground between aristocracy and commonalty, instead of settling in some spot where his five hundred a-year might have won him the definite dignity of a parochial magnate.

The Countess had her views in choosing a quiet provincial place like Milby.  After three years of widowhood, she had brought her feelings to contemplate giving a successor to her lamented Czerlaski, whose fine whiskers, fine air, and romantic fortunes had won her heart ten years ago, when, as pretty Caroline Bridmain, in the full bloom of five-and-twenty, she was governess to Lady Porter’s daughters, whom he initiated into the mysteries of the pas de bas, and the lancers’ quadrilles.  She had had seven years of sufficiently happy matrimony with Czerlaski, who had taken her to Paris and Germany, and introduced her there to many of his old friends with large titles and small fortunes.  So that the fair Caroline had had considerable experience of life, and had gathered therefrom, not, indeed, any very ripe and comprehensive wisdom, but much external polish, and certain practical conclusions of a very decided kind.  One of these conclusions was, that there were things more solid in life than fine whiskers and a title, and that, in accepting a second husband, she would regard these items as quite subordinate to a carriage and a settlement.  Now, she had ascertained, by tentative residences, that the kind of bite she was angling for was difficult to be met with at watering-places, which were already preoccupied with abundance of angling beauties, and were chiefly stocked with men whose whiskers might be dyed, and whose incomes were still more problematic;