Mr.Sowerby, it is true, was fifty, whereas the young lord was as yet only twenty-six, but, nevertheless, her ladyship was becoming anxious on the subject.

In her mind every man was bound to marry as soon as he could maintain a wife; and she held an idea--a quite private tenet, of which she was herself but imperfectly conscious--that men in general were inclined to neglect this duty for their own selfish gratifications, that the wicked ones encouraged the more innocent in this neglect, and that many would not marry at all, were not an unseen coercion exercised against them by the other sex.

The Duke of Omnium was the very head of all such sinners, and Lady Lufton greatly feared that her son might be made subject to the baneful Omnium influence, by means of Mr.Sowerby and Chaldicotes.

And then Mr.Sowerby was known to be a very poor man, with a very large estate.

He had wasted, men said, much on electioneering, and more in gambling.