The preparations for the Whitstable marriage went on without any apparent attention to the intimacy which was growing up between Mr Batherbolt and Georgiana.  There was no room to apprehend anything wrong on that side.  Mr Batherbolt was so excellent a young man, and so exclusively given to religion, that, even should Sophy’s suspicion be correct, he might be trusted to walk about the park with Georgiana.  Should he at any time come forward and ask to be allowed to make the lady his wife, there would be no disgrace in the matter.  He was a clergyman and a gentleman,—­and the poverty would be Georgiana’s own affair.

Mr Longestaffe returned home only on the eve of his eldest daughter’s marriage, and with him came Dolly.  Great trouble had been taken to teach him that...