hy Sir William had made
it a peculiar request that he should come to meet him here. Could the
desire possibly be to reconcile him with Mrs. Lovell? His common sense
rejected the idea at once: Sir William boasted of her wit and tact, and
admired her beauty, but Edward remembered his having responded tacitly
to his estimate of her character, and Sir William was not the man
to court the alliance of his son with a woman like Mrs. Lovell. He
perceived that his father and the fair widow frequently took counsel
together. Edward laughed at the notion that the grave senior had himself
become fascinated, but without utterly scouting it, until he found that
the little lady whom he had led to dinner the first day, was an heiress;
and from that, and other indications, he exactly divined the nature
of his father's provident wishes. But this revelation rendered Mrs.
Lovell's behaviour yet more extraordinary. Could it be credited that
she was abetting Sir William's schemes with all her woman's craft? "Has
she," thought Edward, "become so indifferent to me as to care for my
welfare?" He determined to put her to the test. He made love to Adeline
Gosling. Nothing that he did disturbed the impenetrable complacency of
Mrs. Lovell. She threw them together as she shuffled the guests. She
really seemed to him quite indifferent enough to care for his welfare.
It was a point in the mysterious ways of women, or of widows, that
Edward's experience had not yet come across. All the parties immediately
concerned were apparently so desperately acquiescing in his suit, that
he soon grew uneasy. Mrs. Lovell not only shuffled him into places
with the raw heiress, but with the child's mother; of whom he spoke to
Algernon as of one too strongly breathing of matrimony to appease the
cravings of an eclectic mind.

"Make the path clear for me, then," said Algernon, "if you don't like
the girl. Pitch her tales about me. Say, I've got a lot in me, though
I don't let it out. The game's up between you and Peggy Lovell, that's
clear. She don't forgive you, my boy."

"Ass!" muttered Edward, seeing by the light of his perception, that he
was too thoroughly forgiven.

A principal charm of the life at Fairly to him was that there was no
one complaining. No one looked reproach at him. If a lady was pale and
reserved, she did not seem to accuse him, and to require coaxing. All
faces here were as light as the flying moment, and did not carry the
shadowy weariness of y