She knew,--and where is the girl so placed that does not know ?--that it is a great thing to be an English peeress.

Now, as she stood there thinking of it all, she was Nora Rowley without a shilling in the world, and without a prospect of a shilling.

She had often heard her mother speak fearful words of future possible days, when colonial governing should no longer be within the capacity of Sir Marmaduke.

She had been taught from a very early age that all the material prosperity of her life must depend on matrimony.

She could never be comfortably disposed of in the world, unless some fitting man who possessed those things of which she was so bare, should wish to make her his wife.