During the last few days Lady Arabella had been getting exceedingly impatient.

Her debts, always pressing, were growing to an embarrassing amount.

The only hope she had of comfort in life was a good marriage; but the good marriage on which she had fixed her eye did not seem to move quickly enough--indeed, it did not seem to move at all--in the right direction.

Edgar Caswall was not an ardent wooer.

From the very first he seemed _difficile_, but he had been keeping to his own room ever since his struggle with Mimi Watford.