heart if you forsake
her now! Avice!'

The girl came. 'My manner was hasty and thoughtless this morning,' she
said in a low voice. 'Please pardon me. I wish to abide by my promise.'

Her mother, still tearful, again joined their hands; and the engagement
stood as before.

Pierston went back to Budmouth, but dimly seeing how curiously, through
his being a rich suitor, ideas of beneficence and reparation were
retaining him in the course arranged by her mother, and urged by his own
desire in the face of his understanding.

3. V. ON THE VERGE OF POSSESSION

In anticipation of his marriage Pierston had taken a new red house of
the approved Kensington pattern, with a new studio at the back as large
as a mediaeval barn. Hither, in collusion with the elder Avice--whose
health had mended somewhat--he invited mother and daughter to spend
a week or two with him, thinking thereby to exercise on the latter's
imagination an influence which was not practicable while he was a guest
at their house; and by interesting his betrothed in the fitting and
furnishing of this residence to create in her an ambition to be its
mistress.

It was a pleasant, reposeful time to be in town. There was nobody to
interrupt them in their proceedings, and, it being out of the season,
the largest tradesmen were as attentive to their wants as if those firms
had never before been honoured with a single customer whom they really
liked. Pierston and his guests, almost equally inexperienced--for the
sculptor had nearly forgotten what knowledge of householding he had
acquired earlier in life--could consider and practise thoroughly a
species of skeleton-drill in receiving visitors when the pair should
announce themselves as married and at home in the coming winter season.

Avice was charming, even if a little cold. He congratulated himself yet
again that time should have reserved for him this final chance for one
of the line. She was somewhat like her mother, whom he had loved in the
flesh, but she had the soul of her grandmother, whom he had loved in the
spirit--and, for that matter, loved now. Only one criticism had he to
pass upon his choice: though in outward semblance her grandam idealized,
she had not the first Avice's candour, but rather her mother's
closeness. He never knew exactly what she was thinking and feeling. Yet
he seemed to have such prescriptive rights in women of her blood that
her occasional want of confidence did not deeply troub