Book The Second: Riches Chapter 15 No just Cause or Impediment why these Two Persons

Mr Dorrit, on being informed by his elder daughter that she had accepted
matrimonial overtures from Mr Sparkler, to whom she had plighted her
troth, received the communication at once with great dignity and with a
large display of parental pride; his dignity dilating with the widened
prospect of advantageous ground from which to make acquaintances, and
his parental pride being developed by Miss Fanny's ready sympathy with
that great object of his existence.

He gave her to understand that her
noble ambition found harmonious echoes in his heart; and bestowed
his blessing on her, as a child brimful of duty and good principle,
self-devoted to the aggrandisement of the family name.

To Mr Sparkler, when Miss Fanny permitted him to appear, Mr Dorrit said,
he would not disguise that the alliance Mr Sparkler did him the honour
to propose was highly congenial to his feelings; both as being in unison
with the spontaneous affections of his daughter Fanny, and as opening
a family connection of a gratifying nature with Mr Merdle, the
master spirit of the age.

Mrs Merdle also, as a leading lady rich in
distinction, elegance, grace, and beauty, he mentioned in very laudatory
terms. He felt it his duty to remark (he was sure a gentleman of Mr
Sparkler's fine sense would interpret him with all delicacy), that he
could not consider this proposal definitely determined on, until he
should have had the privilege of holding some correspondence with Mr
Merdle; and of ascertaining it to be so far accordant with the views
of that eminent gentleman as that his (Mr Dorrit's) daughter would be
received on that footing which her station in life and her dowry and
expectations warranted him in requiring that she should maintain in
what he trusted he might be allowed, without the appearance of being
mercenary, to call the Eye of the Great World.