Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

No just Cause or Impediment why these Two Persons
should not be joined together

Mr Dorrit, on being informed by his elder daughter that she had
accepted matrimonial overtures from Mr Sparkler, to whom she had
plighted her troth, received the communication at once with great
dignity and with a large display of parental pride; his dignity
dilating with the widened prospect of advantageous ground from
which to make acquaintances, and his parental pride being developed
by Miss Fanny's ready sympathy with that great object of his
existence. He gave her to understand that her noble ambition found
harmonious echoes in his heart; and bestowed his blessing on her,
as a child brimful of duty and good principle, self-devoted to the
aggrandisement of the family name.

To Mr Sparkler, when Miss Fanny permitted him to appear, Mr Dorrit
said, he would not disguise that the alliance Mr Sparkler did him
the honour to propose was highly congenial to his feelings; both as
being in unison with the spontaneous affections of his daughter
Fanny, and as opening a family connection of a gratifying nature
with Mr Merdle, the master spirit of the age. Mrs Merdle also, as
a leading lady rich in distinction, elegance, grace, and beauty, he
mentioned in very laudatory terms. He felt it his duty to remark
(he was sure a gentleman of Mr Sparkler's fine sense would
interpret him with all delicacy), that he could not consider this
proposal definitely determined on, until he should have had the
privilege of holding some correspondence with Mr Merdle; and of
ascertaining it to be so far accordant with the views of that
eminent gentleman as that his (Mr Dorrit's) daughter would be
received on that footing which her station in life and her dowry
and expectations warranted him in requiring that she should
maintain in what he trusted he might be allowed, without the
appearance of being mercenary, to call the Eye of the Great World.
While saying this, which his character as a gentleman of some
little station, and his character as a father, equally demanded of
him, he would not be so diplomatic as to conceal that the proposal
remained in hopeful abeyance and under conditional acceptance, and
that he thanked Mr Sparkler for the compliment rendered to himself
and to his family. He concluded with some further and more general
observations on the--ha--character of an independent gentleman, and
the--hum--character of a possibly too partial and admiring parent.
To sum the whole up shortly, he received Mr Sparkler's offer very
much as he would have received three or four half-crowns from him
in the days that were gone.

Mr Sparkler, finding himself stunned by the words thus heaped upon
his inoffensive