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necessary to do so. Meanwhile, –’ ‘Meanwhile,’ said Mrs Grayshott, with a significant smile, ‘Mr Dunston is advancing towards us, determined to wrest you from me, and so I shall take my leave of you! Don’t think me impertinent if I say how much I wish I could see you happily established, Abby!’ She moved away as she spoke, leaving the road open to the gentleman in the blue coat and Angola pantaloons, who came up, saying simply: ‘You have come back at last! Bath has been a desert without you.’ She turned this off with a laughing rejoinder; and, after enquiring politely how his mother did, and exchanging a little trivial conversation with him, said mendaciously that she saw her sister beckoning to her, and left him. Miss Wendover, who had observed with satisfaction the presence of Mr Dunston in the Pump Room, sighed. Like Mrs Grayshott, she wished very much to see Abby happily established, and could think of no one who would make her a better husband than Peter Dunston. He was a very respectable man, the owner of a comfortable property situated not many miles from Bath; his manners were easy and agreeable; and Miss Wendover had it on the authority of his widowed mother, who resided with him, that his amiability was only rivalled by the elegance of his mind, and the superiority of his understanding. Such was the excellence of his character that he had never caused his mother to suffer a moment’s anxiety. One might have supposed that Abby, in imminent danger of dwindling into an old maid, would have welcomed the addresses of so eligible a suitor, instead of declaring she had never been able to feel the least tendre for men of uniform virtues. She certainly felt none for Peter Dunston, but Miss Wendover was mistaken when she suspected, in moods of depression, that her dear but perverse sister had set her face against marriage. 31