As regards her it has been told how near she went to throwing herself, with all her vast wealth, into the arms of a young man, whom no father, no guardian could have regarded as a well-chosen husband for any girl;--one who as yet had shown no good qualities, who had been a spendthrift, unprincipled, and debauched.

Alas, she had loved him! It is possible that her love and her wealth might have turned him from evil to good.

But who would have ventured to risk her,--I will not say her and her vast inheritances,--on such a chance?
That evil, however, had been prevented, and those about her had managed to marry her to a young man, very steady by nature, with worldly prospects as brilliant as her own, and with a station than which the world offers nothing higher.

His little threatened mischance,--a passing fancy for a married lady who was too wise to receive vows which were proffered not in the most ardent manner,--had, from special reasons, given some little alarm to his uncle, which had just sufficed at the time to make so very judicious a marriage doubly pleasant to that noble duke, So that all things and all people had conspired to shower substantial comforts on the heads of this couple, when they were joined together, and men and women had not yet ceased to declare how happy were both in the accumulated gifts of fortune.
And as regards Mr Palliser, I think that his married life, and the wife, whom he certainly had not chosen, but who had dropped upon him, suited him admirably.

He wanted great wealth for that position at which he aimed.