Page:Authors daughter v1.djvu/230

226 in what you took to-day, and as we are not going far, we need not start early."

So the matter was settled. Mr. Luﬂon was elated that he had this opportunity of introducing Miss Staunton to his best friend, and of showing the young lady the better society that he could introduce her into. Mrs. Troubridge had been an Adelaide belle some ten years before the date of this story, the liveliest of the lively, a most determined and successful ﬂirt. Why, after ﬁve or six years of skirmishing with a dozen of hearts, she had ﬁnally married a grave middle-aged man like Mr. Troubridge, had been a wonder to all her acquaintances, and especially to all her old admirers. He was not so handsome as several of them, not so clever as most of them, and, though in comfortable circumstances, was not so rich as two or three of those who had either been refused or trifled with. Perhaps the desire to marry and settle down (86 ranger, as the French say, comes upon fast young women as it does upon fast young men at a particular epoch in their existence, and the man who steps in at that time is pretty sure of success, however unsuitable he may have been in other respects before the feminine mind is made up. Nothing astonishes men so much as the matrimonial choice made by their female friends and acquaintances, and particularly