match."

Darrell thus put into Lady Adela's head, he remained there, and became an
/idee fixe/. Viewed in the light of a probable husband, he was elevated
into an "interesting man." She would have received his addresses with
gentle complacency; and, being more the creature of habit than impulse,
would no doubt, in the intimacy of connubial life, have blest him, or any
other admiring husband, with a resaonable modicum of languid affection.
Nevertheless, Lady Adela was an unconscious impostor; for, owing to a
mild softness of eye and a susceptibility to blushes, a victim ensnared
by her beauty would be apt to give her credit for a nature far more
accessible to the romance of the tender passion than, happily perhaps for
her own peace of mind, she possessed; and might flatter himself that he
had produced a sensation which gave that softness to the eye and that
damask to the blush.

Honoria Vipont would have been a choice far more creditable to the good
sense of so mature a wooer. Few better specimens of a young lady brought
up to become an accomplished woman of the world. She had sufficient
instruction to be the companion of an ambitious man-solid judgment to fit
her for his occasional adviser. She could preside with dignity over a
stately household--receive with grace distinguished guests. Fitted to
administer an ample fortune, ample fortune was necessary to the
development of her excellent qualities. If a man of Darrell's age were
bold enough to marry a young wife, a safer wife amongst the young ladies
of London he could scarcely find; for though Honoria was only three-and-
twenty, she was as staid, as sensible, and as remote from all girlish
frivolities, as if she had been eight-and-thirty. Certainly had Guy
Darrell been of her own years, his fortunes unmade, his fame to win, a
lawyer residing at the back of Holborn, or a pretty squire in the petty