ive
him up: you'll see that with your sure chances you'll be able to do much
better."

Our young woman had a sense that if that view could only be put before
her with a particular sniff for poor Mr. Mudge she should hate it as much
as she morally ought. She was conscious of not, as yet, hating it quite
so much as that. But she saw that Mrs. Jordan was conscious of something
too, and that there was a degree of confidence she was waiting little by
little to arrive at. The day came when the girl caught a glimpse of what
was still wanting to make her friend feel strong; which was nothing less
than the prospect of being able to announce the climax of sundry private
dreams. The associate of the aristocracy had personal
calculations--matter for brooding and dreaming, even for peeping out not
quite hopelessly from behind the window-curtains of lonely lodgings. If
she did the flowers for the bachelors, in short, didn't she expect that
to have consequences very different from such an outlook at Cocker's as
she had pronounced wholly desperate? There seemed in very truth
something auspicious in the mixture of bachelors and flowers, though,
when looked hard in the eye, Mrs. Jordan was not quite prepared to say
she had expected a positive proposal from Lord Rye to pop out of it. Our
young woman arrived at last, none the less, at a definite vision of what
was in her mind. This was a vivid foreknowledge that the betrothed of
Mr. Mudge would, unless conciliated in advance by a successful rescue,
almost hate her on the day she should break a particular piece of news.
How could that unfortunate otherwise endure to hear of what, under the
protection of Lady Ventnor, was after all so possible.

CHAPTER IX

Meanwhile, since irritation sometimes relieved her, the betrothed of Mr.
Mudge found herself indebted to that admirer for amounts of it perfectly
proportioned to her fidelity. She always walked with him on Sundays,
usually in the Regent's Park, and quite often, once or twice a month he
took her, in the Strand or thereabouts, to see a piece that was having a
run. The productions he always preferred were the really good
ones--Shakespeare, Thompson or some funny American thing; which, as it
also happened that she hated vulgar plays, gave him ground for what was
almost the fondest of his approaches, the theory that their tastes were,
blissfully, just the same. He was for ever reminding her of that,
rejoicing over it and