of what would happen; she remembered
what people might say--that the neighbors had tongues, and that
Fillingford had ears to his head like other folks. While the buckler of
cordiality fronted Lacey, I was her shield against a flank attack.

Had she really made up her mind then? It looked like it. If she rode in
my company with Lacey in the morning, she received his father without my
company in the afternoon. There could be no doubt what he came for;
middle-aged men of many occupations do not pay calls two or three
afternoons a week without a purpose. What passed at these interviews
remained, of course, a secret; I confess to a suspicion that Jenny found
them dull. Fillingford's wariness of exposing himself to rebuff or
ridicule, his habitual secretiveness as to his emotions, cannot have
made him either an ardent or an entertaining suitor. In truth I do not
believe that he seriously pretended to be in love. He liked her very
much; he thought that she would fill well the place he had to offer, and
that she, in her turn, would like to fill it, and might find him
agreeable enough to accept with it. That would content him. With that I
thought she, too, would be content--considering the other advantages
thrown in. She would not have cared for his love, but she could endure
his company. That carried with it only a limited liability--and good
dividends in the form of rank, position, and influence. In dealing with
the Drivers one had a tendency to fall into commercial metaphors; caught
from old Nicholas, the trick extended itself to Jenny.

But if he were resolved and she ready, why did the thing hang fire? It
did--and surely by Jenny's will? She was reasoning; the affair could not
look dangerous; then it looked dull? But it would look no less dull the
longer she looked at it. Her feelings were not engaged; unless caught up
by strong emotions, she shunned the irrevocable, liked open
alternatives, hated to close the line of retreat; he who still parleys
is still free, he who still bargains is still master. That attitude of
her mind--re-enforced by her father's warning--was always strong with
her and had always to be remembered. Was it enough to account for her
continuing to keep Fillingford at bay? The answer might well be yes--for
these natural predispositions will knock the bottom out of much
speciously logical reasoning about people. But there was another factor
in the case--a thing which could not be overlooked. Why was Leona