Under such circumstances could it
be love? The lady, too, was one who had had offers almost by the
dozen,--offers from men of rank, from men of fashion, and from men
of power; from men endowed with personal attractions, with pleasant
manners, with cultivated tastes, and with eloquent tongues. Not only
had she loved none such, but by none such had she been cajoled into
an idea that it was possible that she could love them. That Dr.
Thorne's tastes were cultivated, and his manners pleasant, might
probably be admitted by three or four old friends in the country
who valued him; but the world in London, that world to which Miss
Dunstable was accustomed, and which was apparently becoming dearer to
her day by day, would not have regarded the doctor as a man likely to
become the object of a lady's passion. But nevertheless the idea did
occur to Mrs. Gresham. She had been brought up at the elbow of this
country practitioner; she had lived with him as though she had been
his daughter; she had been for years the ministering angel of his
household; and, till her heart had opened to the natural love of
womanhood, all her closest sympathies had been with him. In her eyes
the doctor was all but perfect; and it did not seem to her to be out
of the question that Miss Dunstable should have fallen in love with
her uncle.
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