But there are perhaps few men who make such offers in direct terms without having already said and done that which make such offers simply necessary as the final closing of an accepted bargain.

It was so at any rate between Major Grantly and Miss Crawley, and Major Grantly acknowledged to himself that it was so.

He acknowledged also to himself that as regarded Grace herself he had no wish to go back from his implied intentions.

Nothing that either his father or mother might say would shake him in that.

But could it be his duty to bind himself to the family of a convicted thief?
Could it be right that he should disgrace his father and his mother and his sister and his one child by such a connection?
He had a man's heart, and the poverty of the Crawleys caused him no solicitude.