Miss Marjoribanks by Margaret Oliphant

It would be vain to follow Lucilla in detail through her consistent and admirable career; nor is it necessary to say that she went on steadily in face of all her discouragements, with that mixture of success and failure which comes natural to all human affairs. The singular thing about it was, that the years passed on, and that she was permitted by the world in general to fulfil her own promise and prophecy about remaining ten years at home to be a comfort to her dear papa. She had been nineteen when she began her career, and she was nine-and-twenty when that little episode occurred with young Dr. Rider, before he was married to his present wife.

There would have been nothing in the least unsuitable in a marriage between Dr. Rider and Miss Marjoribanks, though people who were the best informed never thought either of them had any serious meaning; but, of course, the general public, having had Lucilla for a long time before their eyes, naturally added on seven or eight years to her age, and concluded her to be a great deal older than the young doctor, though everybody allowed that it would have been a most advantageous match for him in every possible point of view. But, however, it did not come to anything, no more than a great many other nibbles of the same kind did. The period arrived at which Lucilla had thought she might perhaps have begun to go off in her looks, but still there was no immediate appearance of any change of name or condition on her part.