She smiled (and her smile was one of her strong points)
whenever he spoke to her; she went through all her little artlessnesses
and set forth all her little wares in what she believed to be their most
taking aspect. Who can blame her? Theobald was not the ideal she had
dreamed of when reading Byron upstairs with her sisters, but he was an
actual within the bounds of possibility, and after all not a bad actual
as actuals went. What else could she do? Run away? She dared not.
Marry beneath her and be considered a disgrace to her family? She dared
not. Remain at home and become an old maid and be laughed at? Not if
she could help it. She did the only thing that could reasonably be
expected. She was drowning; Theobald might be only a straw, but she
could catch at him and catch at him she accordingly did.
If the course of true love never runs smooth, the course of true match-
making sometimes does so. The only ground for complaint in the present
case was that it was rather slow. Theobald fell into the part assigned
to him more easily than Mrs Cowey and Mrs Allaby had dared to hope. He
was softened by Christina's winning manners: he admired the high moral
tone of everything she said; her sweetness towards her sisters and her
father and mother, her readiness to undertake any small burden which no
one else seemed willing to undertake, her sprightly manners, all were
fascinating to one who, though unused to woman's society, was still a
human being.
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