Lady Charlotte Calne, the Earl’s betrothed, had been so much struck by the splendid proportions of the Staples that she had been moved to utter a spontaneous remark. “How very big your cousins are!” she said. “They are all very good-looking: exceptionally so, I fancy.”

He was gratified, and said eagerly: “Do you think so Indeed? But Lucius has red hair, you know, and although Geoffrey is well enough, I don’t consider Arthur above the ordinary. But John is a fine fellow, isn’t he? I hope you will like him: everyone likes John! I have a great regard for him myself.”

“If that is so he must have a claim on my regard. I assure you I shall like him excessively,” replied the lady, as one who knew where her duty lay.

Not for the first time he congratulated himself on his choice of bride. Himself a man of no more than mild sensibility he found nothing amiss with his Charlotte’s colourless manner; and he would have experienced considerable surprise had he known that she did not meet with universal approbation in his family. But although Lady Maria thought she would make Bevis an excellent wife, the Archdeacon that she was a pretty-behaved girl, and Lady Caroline that her only fault was a lack of dowry, it was noticeable that Mrs. Staple refrained from expressing an opinion, and Mr. Yatton (though not within his wife’s hearing) went so far as to say that she favoured her mother too much for his taste.

The younger generation was more forthright, only the Earl’s sister, who had been instrumental in promoting the match, according Lady Charlotte a full measure of approval. Miss Yatton, with all the assurance of a young lady with one successful London Season at her back, pronounced her to be a dowdy; her brother Geoffrey confided to his cousin Arthur that he would as lief, himself, take a cold poultice to wife; and Captain Staple, unaware of Lady Charlotte’s amiable determination to like him, answered the quizzical lift of Lucius’s sandy brows with an expressive grimace.