would give all I have
in the world to bring them together again," Kate said. "They'll come
together fast enough if they like each other," said Mrs Greenow.
"Alice is young still, and they tell me she's as good looking as
ever. A girl with her money won't have far to seek for a husband,
even if this paragon from Cambridgeshire should not turn up again."

"You don't know Alice, aunt."

"No, I don't. But I know what young women are, and I know what young
men are. All this nonsense about her cousin George,--what difference
will it make? A man like Mr Grey won't care about that,--especially
not if she tells him all about it. My belief is that a girl can have
anything forgiven her, if she'll only tell it herself."

But Kate preferred the other subject, and so, I think, did Mrs
Greenow herself. "Of course, my dear," she would say, "marriage with
me, if I should marry again, would be a very different thing to your
marriage, or that of any other young person. As for love, that has
been all over for me since poor Greenow died. I have known nothing
of the softness of affection since I laid him in his cold grave, and
never can again. 'Captain Bellfield,' I said to him, 'if you were to
kneel at my feet for years, it would not make me care for you in the
way of love.'"

"And what did he say to that?"

"How am I to tell you what he said? He talked nonsense about my
beauty, as all the men do. If a woman were hump-backed, and had only
one eye, they wouldn't be ashamed to tell her she was a Venus."

"But, aunt, you are a handsome woman, you know."

"Laws, my dear, as if I didn't understand all about it; as if I
didn't know what makes a woman run after? It isn't beauty,--and it
isn't money altogether. I've seen women who had plenty of both, and
not a man would come nigh them. They didn't dare. There are some of
them, a man would as soon think of putting his arm round a poplar
tree, they are so hard and so stiff. You know you're a little that
way yourself, Kate, and I've always told you it won't do."

"I'm afraid I'm too old to mend, aunt."

"Not at all, if you'll only set your wits to work and try. You've
plenty of money now, and you're good-looking enough, too, when you
take the trouble to get yourself up. But, as I said before, it isn't
that that's wanted. There's a stand-off about some women,--what the
men call a 'nollimy tangere,' that a man must be quite a furious
Orlando to attempt to get the better of it. They look as th