Chapter 6

I had almost avoided the general election, but some of its
consequences, on my return, had smartly to be faced. The season,
in London, began to breathe again and to flap its folded wings.
Confidence, under the new Ministry, was understood to be reviving,
and one of the symptoms, in a social body, was a recovery of
appetite. People once more fed together, and it happened that, one
Saturday night, at somebody's house, I fed with George Gravener.
When the ladies left the room I moved up to where he sat and begged
to congratulate him. "On my election?" he asked after a moment; so
that I could feign, jocosely, not to have heard of that triumph and
to be alluding to the rumour of a victory still more personal. I
dare say I coloured however, for his political success had
momentarily passed out of my mind. What was present to it was that
he was to marry that beautiful girl; and yet his question made me
conscious of some discomposure--I hadn't intended to put this
before everything. He himself indeed ought gracefully to have done
so, and I remember thinking the whole man was in this assumption
that in expressing my sense of what he had won I had fixed my
thoughts on his "seat." We straightened the matter out, and he was
so much lighter in hand than I had lately seen him that his spirits
might well have been fed from a twofold source. He was so good as
to say that he hoped I should soon make the acquaintance of Miss
Anvoy, who, with her aunt, was presently coming up to town. Lady
Coxon, in the country, had been seriously unwell, and this had
delayed their arrival. I told him I had heard the marriage would
be a splendid one; on which, brightened and humanised by his luck,
he laughed and said "Do you mean for HER?" When I had again
explained what I meant he went on: "Oh she's an American, but
you'd scarcely know it; unless, perhaps," he added, "by her being
used to more money than most girls in England, even the daughters
of rich men. That wouldn't in the least do for a fellow like me,
you know, if it wasn't for the great liberality of her father. He
really has been most kind, and everything's quite satisfactory."
He added that his eldest brother had taken a tremendous fancy to
her and that during a recent visit at Coldfield she had nearly won
over Lady Maddock. I gathered from something he dropped later on
that the free-handed gentleman beyond the seas had not made a
settlement, but had given a handsome present and was apparently to
be looked to, across the water, for other favours. People are
simplified alike by great contentments and great yearnings, and,
whether or no it was Gravener's directness that begot my own, I
seem to recall that in some turn taken by our talk he almost
imposed it on me as an act of