ld wags on.'

'You have nothing special to tell her?'

'Nothing'; he hummed; 'nothing, I fancy, that she does not know.'

'You said you were disappointed.'

'It's always a pleasure to see her.'

'Even in her worst moods, I find it so.'

'Oh! moods!' quoth Redworth.

'My friend, they are to be reckoned, with women.'

'Certainly; what I meant was, that I don't count them against women.'

'Good: but my meaning was . . . I think I remember your once comparing
them and the weather; and you spoke of the "one point more variable in
women." You may forestall your storms. There is no calculating the effect
of a few little words at a wrong season.'

'With women! I suppose not. I have no pretension to a knowledge of the
sex.'

Emma imagined she had spoken plainly enough, if he had immediate designs;
and she was not sure of that, and wished rather to shun his confidences
while Tony was in her young widowhood, revelling in her joy of liberty.
By and by, was her thought: perhaps next year. She dreaded Tony's refusal
of the yoke, and her iron-hardness to the dearest of men proposing it;
and moreover, her further to be apprehended holding to the refusal, for
the sake of consistency, if it was once uttered. For her own sake, she
shrank from hearing intentions, that distressing the good man, she would
have to discountenance. His candour in confessing disappointment, and his
open face, his excellent sense too, gave her some assurance of his not
being foolishly impetuous. After he had read to her for an hour, as his
habit was on evenings and wet days, their discussion of this and that in
the book lulled any doubts she had of his prudence, enough to render it
even a dubious point whether she might be speculating upon a wealthy
bachelor in the old-fashioned ultra-feminine manner; the which she so
abhorred that she rejected the idea. Consequently, Redworth's proposal to
walk down to the valley for Diana, and bring her back, struck her as
natural when a shaft of western sunshine from a whitened edge of
raincloud struck her windows. She let him go without an intimated
monition or a thought of one; thinking simply that her Tony would be more
likely to come, having him for escort. Those are silly women who are
always imagining designs and intrigues and future palpitations in the
commonest actions of either sex. Emma Dunstane leaned to the contrast
between herself and them.

Danvers was at the house about sunset, reporting her mistre