CHAPTER IV.
"_Gorgibus._-- * * * Je te dis que le mariage est une chose sainte et sacree: et que c'est faire en honnetes gens, que de debuter par la.
"_Madelon._--Mon Dieu! que si tout le monde vous ressemblait, un roman serait bientot fini! La belle chose que ce serait, si d'abord Cyrus epousait Mandane, et qu'Aronce de plain-pied fut marie a Clelie! * * * Laissez-nous faire a loisir le tissu de notre roman, et n'en pressez pas tant la conclusion." MOLIERE.

_Les Precieuses Ridicules._ It would be a little hard to blame the rector of Pennicote that in the course of looking at things from every point of view, he looked at Gwendolen as a girl likely to make a brilliant marriage.

Why should he be expected to differ from his contemporaries in this matter, and wish his niece a worse end of her charming maidenhood than they would approve as the best possible?
It is rather to be set down to his credit that his feelings on the subject were entirely good-natured.

And in considering the relation of means to ends, it would have been mere folly to have been guided by the exceptional and idyllic--to have recommended that Gwendolen should wear a gown as shabby as Griselda's in order that a marquis might fall in love with her, or to have insisted that since a fair maiden was to be sought, she should keep herself out of the way.

Mr.Gascoigne's calculations were of the kind called rational, and he did not even think of getting a too frisky horse in order that Gwendolen might be threatened with an accident and be rescued by a man of property.