Mrs Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be that she selfishly preferred Dr Crofts, with all the danger to her children, to Dr Gruffen, with all the danger to herself.

But the result was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would depend on his being able to marry Mrs Dale's eldest daughter.

At that time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr Gruffen was esteemed as much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and that Dr Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice.

Crofts had no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none.

Then, under those circumstances, what was he to do?
It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years before the commencement of this narrative.