For, of course, so clever and so managing a woman as Mrs. Miller has not allowed her daughter to grow up to the age of twenty without making the most careful and judiciously-laid schemes for her ultimate disposal.  That Beatrice is to marry is a matter of course, and Mrs. Miller has well determined that the marriage is to be a good one, and that her daughter is to strengthen her father’s position in Meadowshire by a union with one or other of its leading families.  Now, when Mrs. Miller came to pass the marriageable men of Meadowshire under review, there was no such eligible bachelor amongst them all as Sir John Kynaston, of Kynaston Hall.

It was on him, therefore, that her hopes with regard to Beatrice were fixed.  Fortune hitherto had seemed to smile favourably upon her.  Beatrice had had one season in town, during which she had met Sir John frequently, and he had, contrary to his usual custom, asked her to dance several times when he had met her at balls.  Mrs. Miller said to herself that Sir John, not being a very young man, did not set much store upon mere personal beauty; that he probably valued mental qualities in a woman more highly than the transient glitter of beauty; and that Beatrice’s good sense and sharp, shrewd conversation had evidently made a favourable impression upon him.

She never was more mistaken in her life.  True, Sir John did like Miss Miller, he found her unconventional and amusing; but his only object in distinguishing her by his attentions had been to pay a necessary compliment to the new M.P.’s daughter, a duty which he would have fulfilled equally had she been stupid as well as plain:  moreover, as we have seen, few men were so intensely sensitive to beauty in a woman as was Sir John Kynaston.  Mrs. Miller, however, was full of hopes concerning him.  To do her justice, she was not exactly vulgarly ambitious for her daughter; she liked Sir John personally, and had a high respect for his character, and she considered that Beatrice’s high spirit and self-willed disposition would be most desirably moderated and kept in check by a husband so much older than herself.  Lady Kynaston, moreover, was one of her best and dearest friends, and was her beau-ideal of all that a clever and refined lady should be.  The match, in every respect, would have been a very acceptable one to her.  Whether or no Miss Beatrice shared her mother’s views on her behalf remains to be seen.

The mother and daughter are settling together the preliminaries of a week’s festivities which Mrs. Miller has decided shall be held at Shadonake this winter.  The house is to be filled, and there are to be a series of dinner parties, culminating in a ball.

“The Bayleys, the Westons, the Foresters, and two daughters, I suppose,” reads Mrs. Miller, aloud, from the list in her hand, “Any more for the second dinner-party, Beatrice?”

“Are you not going to ask the Daintrees, of Sutton, mother?”

“Oh, dear me, another parson, Beatrice!  I really don’t think we can; I have got three already.  They shall have a card for the ball.”