But he'll soon get tired of
making love to me, and what you'll do then I cannot imagine.'
That Miss Woolsworthy felt no interest in the coming of the Captain I
will not pretend to say. The advent of any stranger with whom she would
be called on to associate must be matter of interest to her in that
secluded place; and she was not so absolutely unlike other young ladies
that the arrival of an unmarried young man would be the same to her as
the advent of some patriarchal pater-familias. In taking that outlook
into life of which I have spoken she had never said to herself that she
despised those things from which other girls received the excitement,
the joys, and the disappointment of their lives. She had simply given
herself to understand that very little of such things would come in her
way, and that it behoved her to live--to live happily if such might be
possible--without experiencing the need of them. She had heard, when
there was no thought of any such visit to Oxney Colne, that John
Broughton was a handsome clever man--one who thought much of himself and
was thought much of by others--that there had been some talk of his
marrying a great heiress, which marriage, however had not taken place
through unwillingness on his part, and that he was on the whole a man of
more mark in the world than the ordinary captains of ordinary regiments.
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