Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. I, 1889.djvu/184

 already, like numbers of his coevals, have been supporting (or declining to support) a wife and two or three children. At present, he was "engaged" to Clem Peckover; that was an understood thing. His father did not approve it, but this connection was undeniably better than those he had previously declared or concealed. Bob, it seemed evident, was fated to make a mésalliance;—a pity, seeing his parts and prospects. He might have aspired to a wife who had scarcely any difficulty with her h&apos;s; whose bringing-up enabled her to look with compassion on girls who could not play the piano; who counted among her relatives not one collarless individual.

Clem, as we have seen, had already found, or imagined, cause for dissatisfaction with her betrothed. She was well enough acquainted with Bob's repute, and her temper made it improbable, to say the least, that the course of wooing would in this case run very smoothly. At present, various little signs were beginning to convince her that she had a rival, and the