Sink or Swim? , Volume III by Matilda Charlotte Houstoun

"I really am at a loss to make up my mind which is the most / extraordinary -- the man behaving in this way without encouragement, or / your being so lost to everything that is -- ahem! -- due to your position in / life as to allow him to think, to hope, that his proposals -- _most_ / impertinent ones, I must say -- _could_ meet with anything but anger and / contempt."

Lady Millicent was seated on her presidential sofa, in the room / appropriated in Bolton-square to her especial use. It was a dull, dark, / business-looking apartment. The "third drawing-room" it was called, and / in it milady was wont to receive such visitors as clearly were not there / for purposes of mere pleasure, or with the intention of ephemerally / enjoying themselves -- men of law, serious men, with faces fraught with / the care that the craving after six-and-eightpences is wont to impress / on the human countenance divine, were seen entering, clearly with a / purpose, the heavy door (white-painted and gilt, but shabby and / tarnished now) that led to milady's sanctum. It was a room into which / her young daughters rarely intruded; and when, on the morning in / question (it was that of the very day which Honor passed so feverishly / with Arthur Vavasour by her side), Rhoda, poor, timid, nervous Rhoda, / was summoned to an audience with her awe-inspiring mamma, she made her / _entrée_ with a beating heart, and, though she knew not wherefore, with / a strong presentment of evil. The open letter in Lady Millicent's hand / was scarcely evidence enough to awaken in her mind anything at all / approaching to the truth. Rhoda was as far as the poles from imagining / that the sedate rector of Switcham, the quiet, unpretending young man, / whose "duties" ever seemed so much above his pleasures, could have so / far allowed his mundane feelings, his passions, that were of the "earth, / earthy," to overpower his well-regulated mind, as to induce him to offer / to the great lady of Gillingham -- the patroness of his living, and one / with whom he knew himself to be _not_ a favourite -- his humble proposals / for her daughter's hand.