CHAPTER VII

MISS PRETTYMAN'S PRIVATE ROOM

Major Grantly, when threatened by his father with pecuniary punishment,
should he demean himself by such a marriage as that he had proposed to
himself, had declared that he would offer his hand to Miss Crawley on
the next morning. This, however, he had not done. He had not done it,
partly because he did not quite believe his father's threat, and partly
because he felt that that threat was almost justified--for the present
moment--by the circumstances in which Grace Crawley's father had placed
himself.

Henry Grantly acknowledged, as he drove himself home on the morning
after his dinner at the rectory, that in this matter of his marriage he
did owe much to his family. Should he marry at all, he owed it to them
to marry a lady. And Grace Crawley--so he told himself--was a lady. And
he owed it to them to bring among them as his wife a woman who should
not disgrace him or them by her education, manners, or even by her
personal appearance. In all these respects Grace Crawley was, in his
judgment, quite as good as they had a right to expect her to be, and in
some respects a great deal superior to that type of womanhood with which
they had been most generally conversant. 'If everybody had her due, my
sister isn't fit to hold a candle to her,' he said to himself. It must
be acknowledged, therefore, that he was really in love with Grace
Crawley; and he declared to himself over and over again, that his family
had no right to demand that he should marry a woman with money. The