though sprightly, taking
girls like themselves would have been welcomed in almost any circle.
The fact was, people would have been glad enough to invite them, had
their mother not been jealous of any attention paid to her daughters
that was not extended to herself; and, hospitable as their friends might
be, it was but reasonable that a monument of grief and picture of woe
unutterable should not be earnestly sought after for the centre-piece of
a social gathering. It was owing to the same reason, also, that neither
of the girls had yet got married; for Lady Dasher would certainly have
expected any matrimonial proposal to have been made to herself in the
first instance, when, after declining the honour, she could have passed
the handkerchief to her daughters. Besides, the mere dread of having
the infliction of such a mother-in-law would have sufficed to frighten
off the most ardent wooer or rabid aspirant for connubial felicity.

Notwithstanding this, the girls went about to some extent in their own
ways; and, on their return home, naturally gossiped with their mother
over all they had seen and heard abroad. Thus it was that Lady Dasher
was so well-informed in all local matters, and why I thought of
appealing to her aid. But I should have to manage cautiously. She
would think nothing--she was such a simple-minded body--of detailing all
your inquiries to the very subject of them, in a fit of unguarded
confidence. Cross-examining her was a most diplomatic proceeding. If
you went the right way about it, you could get anything out of her
without committing yourself in the slightest way; whereas, if you set to
work wrongly, you might not only be foundered by a provoking reticence,
which she could assume at times, but might, also, some day hear that
your secret intentions and machiavellian conduct were the common talk of
the parish.

Lady Dasher, although of a strictly pious turn of mind, did not object
to Sunday callers. Good. I would go there that very afternoon after
lunch, and see how the land lay.

I kept my resolve, and went.

Ushered into the well-known little drawing-room of the corner house of
The Terrace, whose windows had a commanding view of the main
thoroughfare of our suburb, I had ample leisure, before the ladies
appeared, of observing the arrangement of certain fuchsias in a monster
flower-stand that took up half the room, on the growth and excellence of
which Lady Dasher prided herself greatly. Pr