Though they were not imaginatively mercenary, as the creatures tainted with wealth commonly are, they talked of the sum over and over in the solitude of their chamber.

'Dukes have married for less.' Such an heiress, they said, might buy up a Principality.

Victor had supplied them with something of an apology to the gentleman proposing to Nesta in their house.
The chronicle of it is, that Dudley Sowerby did this on the fifteenth day of September; and that it was not known to the damsel's parents before the twenty-third; as they were away on an excursion in South Tyrol:--away, flown, with just a word of the hurried departure to their envious, exiled girl; though they did not tell her of new constructions at the London house partly causing them to fly.

Subject to their consent, she wrote, she had given hers.

The letter was telegramic on the essential point.