All the Year Round, Vol. 14: A Weekly Journal, from July 29, 1865, to January 6, 1866 (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from All the Year Round, Vol. 14: A Weekly Journal, From July 29, 1865, to January 6, 1866 Your English match-maker is, for the most part, a comfortable matron, plump, good natured, kindly, with a turn for sentiment and diplomacy. She has, The Etiquette of Courtship and Marriage at her fingers ends, and gives copies of that invaluable little manual to her young friends, as soon as they are engaged. When the sermon is dull, she amuses herself by reading the Solemnization of Matrimony. She delights in novels that have a great deal of love in them, and thinks Miss Bremer a finer writer than Mr. Thackeray. To patch up lovers' quarrels, to pave the way for a proposal, to propitiate reluctant guardians, are offices in which her very soul rejoices, and, like the death-bed hag in the Bride of Lammermoor who surveyed all her fellow-creatures from a professional point of view, seeing a bonny corpse in every fine young man about that country-side, she beholds only bridegrooms and brides elect in the very children of her friends, when they come home for the holidays. Lady Arabella Walkingshaw was an enthusiastic match-maker. She had married off her own daughters with brilliant success, and, being a real lover of the art of matrimony, delighted "to keep her hand in" among the young people of her acquaintance. What whist was to Mrs. Battle, match-making was to Lady Arabella Walkingshaw. "It was her business, her duty, what she came into the world to do." She went about it scientifically. She had abstruse theories with respect to eyes, complexions, ages, and christian names, and even plunged into unknown physiological depths on the subject of races, genealogies, ties of consanguinity, and hereditary characteristics. In short, she constructed hp, r model matches after a private ideal of her own. But hers was not altogether a sentimental, nor even a physiological, ideal. She was essentially a woman of the world, and took an interest quite as deep, if not deeper, in the pairing of fortunes as of faces. To introduce an income of ten thousand a year to a dowry of fifty thousand pounds, and unite the two sums in the bonds (and settlements) of wedlock, was to Lady Arabella an enterprise of surpassing interest. She would play for such a result as eagerly and passionately as if her own happiness depended on the cards, and the stakes were for her own winning. With such a hobby kept perpetually saddled in the chambers of her imagination, it was not surprising that the sight of Saxon Trefalden leading Miss Hatherton down to dance, should have sufficed to send Lady Arabella off at a canter. "What a charming match that would be! said she to Mrs. Bunyon. Mrs. Bunyon was the wife of the handsome Bishop, tall, aristocrat tic-looking, and many years his junior. Both ladies were standing near their hostess, and she was still welcoming the coming guest. "Do you think so?" said Mrs. Bunyon, doubtfully. "I don't see why." "My dear Mrs. Bunyon - two such splendid fortunes!" "The less reason that either should marry for money, " Replied the Bishops wife. "Besides, look at the difference of age" Not more than five years, said Lady Arabella. "But it would be five years on the wrong side. What do you say, Lady Castletowers - would they make a desirable couple?" "I did not hear the names, " replied Lady Castletowers, with one of her most gracious smiles. "We were speaking, " said the match-maker, "of Miss Hatherton and Mr. Trefalden." The smile vanished from Lady Castletowers' lin. "I should think it a most injudicious connexion, " she said, coldly. "Mr. Trefalden is a mere boy, and has no prestige beyond that of wealth." "But fortune is position, " said Lady Arabella, defending her ground inch by inch, and thinking, perhaps, of her own marriage. "Miss Hatherton has fortune, and may therefore aspire to more than fortune in her matrimonial choice, " replied the Countes...