] The Thorpes seem to be very low on the social scale--and a clergyman, while not always rich, generally was accorded great respect. Look at the Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine; the Grants and the Bertrams. Being a clergyman's wife may have given her the delights of paling around with the rich and famous. And at twenty-one, she was probably getting rather old and anxious to get married.

"Being now in her twenty-first year, Maria Bertram was beginning to think matrimony a duty" - and she was a baronet's daughter with adequate dowry.