For my part, I never thought well of the marriage; and I endeavoured to dissuade my brother when Mrs.Raynor asked him to give Janet away at the wedding.
'If you will take my advice, Richard,' I said, 'you will have nothing to do with that marriage.' And he has seen the justice of my opinion since.
Mrs.Raynor herself was against the connection at first; but she always spoiled Janet, and I fear, too, she was won over by a foolish pride in having her daughter marry a professional man.

I fear it was so.

No one but myself, I think, foresaw the extent of the evil.' 'Well,' said Mrs.Pettifer, 'Janet had nothing to look forward to but being a governess; and it was hard for Mrs.Raynor to have to work at millinering--a woman well brought up, and her husband a man who held his head as high as any man in Thurston.

And it isn't everybody that sees everything fifteen years beforehand.

Robert Dempster was the cleverest man in Milby; and there weren't many young men fit to talk to Janet.' 'It is a thousand pities,' said Miss Pratt, choosing to ignore Mrs.
Pettifer's slight sarcasm, 'for I certainly did consider Janet Raynor the most promising young woman of my acquaintance;--a little too much lifted up, perhaps, by her superior education, and too much given to satire, but able to express herself very well indeed about any book I recommended to her perusal.