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Rh more interesting than that of his own, it would seem that he must have had some strong reason for having kept studiously apart from the social life on board the Boomerang.

He had a reason, and it was this: he was an engaged man, and on his probation. A bachelor, still under thirty, of desultory habits which unfitted him to shine in any profession, he had a competency—that refuge of the incompetent—which made him independent.

Some months previously he had had the good fortune to meet with a lady somewhat his junior in years, but endowed with charms of mind and character which excited his admiration and reverence. He recognised that she supplied the qualities in which he felt himself deficient; he was weary of the rather purposeless life he had led. He wanted a wife who would regulate and organise his existence; and Miss Sophia Pinceney, with her decision and her thoroughness, was eminently the person to do it. So it was not long before he took courage and proposed to her.

Miss Pinceney, though she had been highly educated, and possessed a considerable fortune