t--partly because she heard the door of
the dining-room open--into a smile.

"I try you in every way," she said, half laughing. "I do everything to
beguile you into a pleasanter speech. I thought you must at least have
said then that you hoped you would have nothing to say but happiness.
No! you are not to be caught, however one tries, mamma."

John came in at this moment, not without a whiff about him of the
cigarette over which he had lingered so. It relieved him to see the
two ladies seated opposite each other in the bow window, and to hear
something like a laugh in the air. Perhaps they were discussing other
things, and not this momentous marriage question, in which certainly no
laughter was.

"You have your usual fire," he said, "but the wind has quite gone down,
and I am sure it is not wanted to-night."

"It looks cheerful always, John."

"Which is the reason, I suppose, why you carefully place yourself out of
sight of it--one of the prejudices of English life."

And then he came forward into the recess of the window, which was partly
separated from the room by a table with flowers on it, and a great bush
in a pot, of delicate maiden-hair fern. It was perhaps significant,
though he did not mean it for any demonstration of partisanship, that
he sat down on Elinor's side. Both the ladies felt it so instinctively,
although, on the contrary, had the truth been known, all John's real
agreement was with the mother; but in such a conjuncture it is not truth
but personal sympathy that carries the day. "You are almost in the dark
here," he said.

"Neither of us is doing anything. One is lazy on a summer night."

"There is a great deal more in it than that," said Elinor, in a voice
which faltered a little. "You talk about summer nights, and the weather,
and all manner of indifferent things, but you know all the time there
is but one real subject to talk of, and that we are all thinking of
that."

"That is my line, aunt," said John. "Elinor is right. We might sit
and make conversation, but of course this is the only subject we are
thinking of. It's very kind of you to take me into the consultation. Of
course I am in a kind of way the nearest in relation, and the only man
in the family--except my father--and I know a little about law, and all
that. Now let me hear formally, as if I knew nothing about it (and, in
fact, I know very little), what the question is. Elinor has met someone
who--who has proposed to her--no