partnership, the
Squire was expecting, was about to offer, something quite different.

The thought scared and repelled her. If that were indeed the case,
she would bid Mannering a long and final farewell.

But no!--she reassured herself; she recalled the Squire's passionate
absorption in his archaeological pursuits; how his dependence upon
her, his gratitude to her, his surprising fits of docility, were all
due to the fact that she helped him to pursue them--that his mind
sharpened itself against hers--that her hand and brain were the
slaves of his restless intelligence.

That was all--that must, that should be all. She thought vigorously
of the intellectual comradeships of history--beginning with Michael
Angelo and Vittoria Colonna. They were not certainly quite on all
fours with her own situation--but give modern life and the new woman
time!

Suppose, then, these anxieties set at rest, and that immediately,
within twenty-four hours, or a week, the Squire were to ask her to
marry him and were ready to understand the matter as she did--what
else stood in the way?

Then, slowly, in the darkness of the room, there rose before her the
young figures of the twins, with their arms round each other's
necks, as she had often seen them--Desmond and Pamela. And they
looked at her with hostile eyes!

'Cuckoo!--intriguer!--we don't want you!--we won't accept you!'

But after all, as Elizabeth reflected not without a natural
exasperation, she was _not_--consciously--a cuckoo; she was not an
intriguer; there was nothing of the Becky Sharp about her at all; it
would have been so very much simpler if there had been! To swallow
the Squire and Mannering at one gulp, to turn out the twins, to put
Mrs. Gaddesden--who, as Elizabeth had already discovered, was
constantly making rather greedy demands upon her father--on rations
according to her behaviour, to bring in her own poor mother and all
her needy relations--to reign supreme, in fact, over Mannering and
the county--nothing would be easier.

The only thing that stood in the way was that the Squire's secretary
happened to be a nice woman--and not an adventuress. Elizabeth's
sense of humour showed her the kind of lurid drama that Pamela no
doubt was concocting about her--perhaps with the help of Beryl--the
two little innocents! Elizabeth recalled the intriguing French
'companion' in _War and Peace_ who inveigles the old Squire. And as
for the mean and mercenary stepmothers of