Now there had come a man so thoroughly fitting, so marvellously endowed, that no worldly blessing would have been wanting.

Mr.Glascock had more than once spoken to her of the glories of Monkhams.

She thought of Monkhams now more than she had ever thought of the place before.
It would have been a great privilege to be the mistress of an old time-honoured mansion, to call oaks and elms her own, to know that acres of gardens were submitted to her caprices, to look at herds of cows and oxen, and be aware that they lowed on her own pastures.
And to have been the mother of a future peer of England, to have the nursing, and sweet custody and very making of a future senator,--would not that have been much?
And the man himself who would have been her husband was such a one that any woman might have trusted herself to him with perfect confidence.

Now that he was gone she almost fancied that she did love him.

Then she thought of Hugh Stanbury, sitting as he had described himself, in a little dark closet at the office of the "D.