He did really admire her, with all sincerity and singleness of
heart; describing her, in long confidential letters to his mother, as a
woman possessed of every gift calculated to promote a man's advancement in
this world and the next. He knew that her father's second marriage must
needs make a considerable change in her position. There would be an heir,
in all probability, and Sophia would no longer be the great heiress she had
been. But she would be richly dowered doubtless, come what might; and she
was brought nearer to the aspirations of a curate by this reduction of her
fortune.
Miss Granger accepted the young priest's services, and patronised him with
a sublime unconsciousness of his aspirations. She had heard it whispered
that his father had been a grocer, and that he had an elder brother who
still carried on a prosperous colonial trade in the City. For anything like
retail trade Miss Granger had a profound contempt. She had all the pride of
a parvenu, and all the narrowness of mind common to a woman who lives in a
world of her own creation. So while Mr. Tillott flattered himself that he
was making no slight impression upon her heart, Miss Granger regarded him
as just a little above the head gardener and the certificated schoolmaster.
October came, and the day appointed for the return of the master of Arden
Court; rather a gloomy day, and one in a succession of wet and dismal days,
with a dull gray sky that narrowed the prospect, and frequent showers of
drizzling rain.
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