"Oh, bother my Aunt Helen! What do you think she had the impertinence to
write--but never mind! Is it to Ralph?"

"Your Aunt Helen, I was going to say, my dear boy, is an extraordinary
woman. It was from her originally that the Pilgrim first learnt to call
the female the practical animal. He studies us all, you know. The
Pilgrim's Scrip is the abstract portraiture of his surrounding relatives.
Well, your Aunt Helen"--

"Mrs. Doria Battledoria!" laughed Richard.

"--being foiled in a little pet scheme of her own--call it a System if
you like--of some ten or fifteen years' standing, with regard to Miss
Clare!"--

The fair Shuttlecockiana!"

"--instead of fretting like a man, and questioning
Providence, and turning herself and everybody else inside out, and seeing
the world upside down, what does the practical animal do? She wanted to
marry her to somebody she couldn't marry her to, so she resolved
instantly to marry her to somebody she could marry her to: and as old
gentlemen enter into these transactions with the practical animal the
most readily, she fixed upon an old gentleman; an unmarried old
gentleman, a rich old gentleman, and now a captive old gentleman. The
ceremony takes place in about a week from the present time. No doubt you
will receive your invitation in a day or two."

"And that cold, icy, wretched Clare has consented to marry an old man!"
groaned Richard. "I'll put a stop to that when I go to town."