MABEL'S PROGRESS.

BY THE AUTHOR of "AUNT MARGARET'S TROUBLE."

BOOK I.

CHAPTER IX. MISS CHARLEWOOD IS DIPLOMATIC.

THERE are various ways of attaining that
condition of mind and feeling which is, by common
consent, described as ""being in love."
But for all these various methods one phrase
serves—also by common consent. Men and
women are said to " fall in love," and that is
all; but is the process usually by any means so
sudden as that expression would seem to imply?
The modern sense of mankind, among men of
European blood, makes the right to govern
dependent, at least theoretically, upon the consent
of the governed; and perhaps we have
unconsciously introduced the principle into other
spheres. At all events, I cannot but think that
the blind god, whose " thrasonical brag of I
came, saw, and overcame," our forefathers
submitted to with an absolute obedience, has in
these latter days lost somewhat of the halo of
tyranny by divine right, and is often compelled
to submit his credentials to the scrutiny of his
subjects, like other and mortal monarchs. I
think people can help being in love more often
than is generally supposed, n'en déplaise à
messieurs les amoureux, and that men may not
only fall, but walk, trot, amble, gallop, and even
lounge, into love. That they can be contradicted
into it, I take to be beyond controversy. Nor
can the spirit which protests against a
prohibition it deems unjust, be considered an
unreasonably rebellious one. The more
Clement Charlewood pondered on his father's
words respecting Mabel Earnsliaw, the less his
heart and conscience could agree with them
or accept them as justly binding on his conduct.
Supposing (he always put the case mentally
as being a most improbable hypothesis)
—supposing he had been inclined to admire
and to—to—well, for the sake of argument
say, to love—Miss Earnsliaw. Was there
anything in their respective positions which should
reasonably make such a love improper or
unwise? In every particular, save money, Mabel,
it seemed to him, had the best of it. The
Hammerham world knew, or might know, that his
grandfather was an Irish bricklayer. Mabel
came of people in the upper half of the middle
class: Mrs. Saxelby's father having been a
country clergyman, and Mabel's own father a
professor of chemistry, of some scientific repu-
tation. Mabel was young, comely, clever, and a
lady. (Clement sternly kept the list of her
qualities down to the barest and most indisputable
matters of fact.) And though the great
firm of Gandry Charlewood and Son was rich
and prosperous, there were risks as well as
successes; losses as well as profits; and Clement, as
a junior partner with a very small share in the
concern, had yet his way to make in the world.
Mabel was nearly seventeen; Clement was
turned seven-and-twenty. In age, at all events,
there was no inconvenient disparity. When he
compared her mentally with the girls he knew,
she came quite triumphantly out of the ordeal.
She was superior to his sister Augusta in
intellect, to Penelope in beauty and sweetness, to
the Misses Fluke in everything. Not one of
the Hammerham young ladies who frequented
Bramley Manor had, Clement assured himself,
Mabel's quiet grace and unobtrusive self-
possession. He had seen her in her own
home, and knew her to be affectionate and
unselfish. What reasonable objection could
his parents have to make against their son
marrying such a girl as this? Surely, surely,
Mabel would be the very pearl of daughters-in-
law—one to be sought for diligently, and
rejoiced over when found! " But as it is," said
Clement, bringing his meditations to a close,
"it is just as well that I have never taken it
into my head to think of making love to her,
though if I had the least suspicion that she
cared a straw about me——but that's all
nonsense, of course; it is the principle of the thing
that I am contending for."

Mabel, on her side, was innocent of such
day-dreams, either on principle or otherwise.
I do not mean to say that she nad no ideal hero
floating in her brain whom she was one day to
love and marry. But it was all very vague
and distant. Mabel was free from coquetry,
and had none of that morbid craving for
admiration, no matter from whom, which makes some
girls so ready to fall in love, and to be fallen
in love with, on the smallest provocation. Certain
it is that she had never thought of Clement
Charlewood in the light of a possible suitor, and
that she would have been immensely surprised to
learn that his marrying or not marrying her had