Sink or Swim? , Volume I by Matilda Charlotte Houstoun

The intelligence which soon after reached the Paddocks, namely, that / Arthur Vavasour was about to leave Gillingham, took Honor by surprise. / Not that she was ignorant of the all-important fact that the time was / drawing near when the heir-apparent was to take upon himself the duties / and responsibilities of matrimony. There was nothing new to Switcham and / its neighbourhood in the idea that their young landlord was at the early / age of twenty-one to pass at once from the thoughtless irresponsibility / of boyhood to the duller dignity of a man; and yet for all that, and / though Honor had often heard her husband's friends and neighbours talk / over the coming event, she never seemed quite to realise the fact that / Arthur Vavasour was going to be married. One reason of this might be / that the future husband of Sophy Duberly was not in the habit of himself / alluding to the approaching change. As Honor sometimes said to herself, / he seemed to entirely forget what was hanging over his head. His spirits / were often fitful; at one time bright and joyous, at another depressed / almost to zero. Honor, remembering his engagement, would often marvel at / his fits of absence, his look -- so strange in one so young -- of brooding / care; for during the many weeks which Arthur Vavasour had spent either / at the Castle or as a guest of his future father-in-law, Honor had seen / a great deal of Miss Duberly's intended husband. There had been nothing / conspicuous or curiosity-rousing in their intimacy. Other gentlemen came / and went, and were offered lunch (that meal at the Paddocks was famed / far and wide for excellence) by hospitable John Beacham; and other / gentlemen might, if they were so disposed, join that pretty, / modest-looking little wife of his in her daily rides on the Lady Meg.

For how long, or rather for how short a time these two young persons / would, under less propitious circumstances, have escaped the heavy / censure which their thoughtlessness deserved, it would be hard to say. / It was a great thing for both that one at least was but a bird of / passage. Very soon (in a few short weeks only), Mr. Vavasour was to be / married; and in the mean time there were plenty -- a glorious safeguard / for endangered reputations -- of other things and people, besides the / farmer's wife, to be talked about. There was the _trousseau_ of the / bride, the number and beauty of her presents, and -- still more / immediately interesting to the young of all degrees in that division of / Sandyshire -- there were the anticipated festivities at Danescourt, in / honour, as was almost openly declared by the popular Countess of / Guernsey, of Arthur Vavasour's "coming of age."