you tell me that you are going to make her Mrs. Shand.'

'You are much more likely to make her Mrs. Caldigate.'

'I don't know that I should have any objection;--that is, if I wanted
a wife. She is good-looking, clever, well-educated, and would be
well-mannered were it not that she bristles up against the ill-usage of
the world too roughly.'

'I didn't know it had gone so far as that,' said Shand, angrily.

'Nor did I, till you suggested it to me. Now I think I'll go to sleep,
if you please, and dream about it.'

He did not go to sleep, but lay awake half thinking and half dreaming.
He certainly liked Mrs. Smith; but then, as he had begun to find out of
himself he liked women's society generally. He was almost jealous of the
doctor, because the doctor was allowed to talk to Miss Green and waltz
with Miss Green, whereas he could not approach her. Then he thought of
Maria Shand and that kiss in the little back parlour,--the kiss which
had not meant much, but which had meant something; and then of Julia
Babington, to whom he was not quite sure that he ought not to feel
himself engaged. But the face that was clearest to him of all,--and
which became the dearer the nearer that he approached to a state of
dozing,--was that of Hester Bolton, whose voice he had hardly heard, who
had barely spoken to him;--the tips of whose fingers he had only just
touched. If there was any one thing fixed on his mind it was that, as
soon as he had put together a large lump of gold, he would go back to
Cambridge and win Hester Bolton to be his wife. But yet what a singular
woman was this Mrs. Smith! As to marrying her, that of course had been a