never think of anybody’s falling in love with them, any more than of their being struck by lightning.  But in this case there were special reasons, in addition to the common family delusion,—­reasons which seemed to make it impossible that she should attract a suitor.  Who would dare to marry Elsie?  No, let her have the pleasure, if it was one, at any rate the wholesome excitement, of companionship; it might save her from lapsing into melancholy or a worse form of madness.  Dudley Venner had a kind of superstition, too, that, if Elsie could only outlive three septenaries, twenty-one years, so that, according to the prevalent idea, her whole frame would have been thrice made over, counting from her birth, she would revert to the natural standard of health of mind and feelings from which she had been so long perverted.  The thought of any other motive than love being sufficient to induce Richard to become her suitor had not occurred to him.  He had married early, at that happy period when interested motives are least apt to influence the choice; and his single idea of marriage was, that it was the union of persons naturally drawn towards each other by some mutual attraction.  Very simple, perhaps; but he had lived lonely for many years since his wife’s death, and judged the hearts of others, most of all of his brother’s son, by his own.  He had often thought whether, in case of Elsie’s dying or being necessarily doomed to seclusion, he might not adopt this nephew and make him his heir; but it had not occurred to him that Richard might wish to become his son-in-law for the sake of his property.

It is very easy to criticise other people’s modes of dealing with their children.  Outside observers see results; parents see processes.  They notice the trivial movements and accents which betray the blood of this or that ancestor; they can detect the irrepressible movement of hereditary impulse in looks and acts which mean nothing to the common observer.  To be a parent is almost to be a fatalist.  This boy sits with legs crossed, just as his uncle used to whom he never saw; his grandfathers both died before he was born, but he has the movement of the eyebrows which we remember in one of them, and the gusty temper of three different generations, can tell pretty nearly the range of possibilities and the limitations of a child, actual or potential, of a given stock,—­errors excepted always, because children of the same stock are not bred just alike, because the traits of some less known ancestor are liable to break out at any time, and because each human being has, after all, a small fraction of individuality about him which gives him a flavor, so that he is distinguishable from others by his friends or in a court of justice, and which occasionally makes a genius or a saint or a criminal of him.  It is well that young persons cannot read these fatal oracles of Nature.  Blind impulse is her highest wisdom, after all.  We make our great jump, and then she takes the bandage off our