I on my frequent transits rarely missed her, and naturally connected
her image with the great thoroughfare where only I had ever seen her.
Why she came so punctually I do not exactly know; but I believe with
some burden of commissions, to be executed in Bath, which had gathered
to her own residence as a central rendezvous for converging them. The
mail-coachman who drove the Bath mail and wore the royal livery
[Footnote: "Wore the royal livery":--The general impression was that
the royal livery belonged of right to the mail-coachmen as their
professional dress. But that was an error. To the guard it _did_
belong, I believe, and was obviously essential as an official warrant,
and as a means of instant identification for his person, in the
discharge of his important public duties. But the coachman, and
especially if his place in the series did not connect him immediately
with London and the General Post-Office, obtained the scarlet coat only
as an honorary distinction after long (or, if not long, trying and
special) service.] happened to be Fanny's grandfather. A good man he
was, that loved his beautiful granddaughter, and, loving her wisely,
was vigilant over her deportment in any case where young Oxford might
happen to be concerned. Did my vanity then suggest that I myself,
individually, could fall within the line of his terrors? Certainly not,
as regarded any physical pretensions that I could plead; for Fanny (as
a chance passenger from her own neighbourhood once told me) counted in
her train a hundred and ninety-nine professed admirers, if not open
aspirants to her favour; and probably not one of the whole brigade but
excelled myself in personal advantages. Ulysses even, with the unfair
advantage of his accursed bow, could hardly have undertaken that amount
of suitors. So the danger might have seemed slight--only that woman is
universally aristocratic; it is amongst her nobilities of heart that
she _is_ so. Now, the aristocratic distinctions in my favour might
easily with Miss Fanny have compensated my physical deficiencies. Did I