by wishing to make you my wife?' he had asked. 'I don't know that you
can, but all the same you don't care,' she said. And so that young
lady escaped the pitfall. Now there was another young lady, to whom
the reader shall be introduced in time, whom Sir Felix was instigated
to pursue with unremitting diligence. Her wealth was not defined, as
had been the £40,000 of her predecessor, but was known to be very much
greater than that. It was, indeed, generally supposed to be
fathomless, bottomless, endless. It was said that in regard to money
for ordinary expenditure, money for houses, servants, horses, jewels,
and the like, one sum was the same as another to the father of this
young lady. He had great concerns;--concerns so great that the payment
of ten or twenty thousand pounds upon any trifle was the same thing to
him,--as to men who are comfortable in their circumstances it matters
little whether they pay sixpence or ninepence for their mutton chops.
Such a man may be ruined at any time; but there was no doubt that to
anyone marrying his daughter during the present season of his
outrageous prosperity he could give a very large fortune indeed. Lady
Carbury, who had known the rock on which her son had been once
wrecked, was very anxious that Sir Felix should at once make a proper
use of the intimacy which he had effected in the house of this topping
Croesus of the day.

And now there must be a few words said about Henrietta Carbury. Of
course she was of infinitely less importance than her brother, who was
a baronet, the head of that branch of the Carburys, and her mother's
darling; and, therefore, a few words should suffice. She also was very
lovely, being like her brother; but somewhat less dark and with
features less absolutely regular. But she had in her countenance a
full measure of that sweetness of expression which seems to imply that
consideration of self is subordinated to consideration for others.