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T would have been a great surprise to George, who had so long secretly loved Elise, to know that Mr. Johns secretly approved of his suit. Yet such was the case. No one has ever explained why it is that parents and guardians consider dull people such safe matrimonial investments for their young charges. Even granting the unsound assumption that dull people are more apt to be content with their own matrimonial fetters, they are certainly more apt to be the cause of discontent in others. Mr. Johns, who was bored to death by five minutes of George's society, believed that his granddaughter—not fond of being bored, either—would be happy to spend the rest of her life with him.

But of all this George was completely ignorant—indeed, he supposed that he was the last person Mr. Johns would tolerate as grandson-in-law, and so he believed that in coming to protect Elise in the immediate danger in which he feared she stood he was