“Mr. Roy leaving St. Andrews, you mean?  How can I tell?  He has never told me.  Why do you ask?”

“Because until he gone, I stay,” said the young man, doggedly.  “I’m not going back to Oxford leaving him master of the field.  I have stood him as long as I possibly can, and I’ll not stand him any longer.”

“David! you forget yourself.”

“There—­now you are offended; I know you are, when you draw yourself up in that way, my dear little auntie.  But just hear me.  You are such an innocent woman, you don’t know the world as men do.  Can’t you see—­no, of course you can’t—­that very soon all St. Andrews will be talking about you?”

“About me?”

“Not about you exactly, but about the family.  A single man—­a marrying man, as all the world says he is, or ought to be, with his money—­can not go in and out, like a tame cat, in a household of women, without having, or being supposed to have—­ahem!—­intentions.  I assure you”—­and he swung himself on the arm of her chair, and looked into her face with an angry earnestness quite unmistakable—­“I assure you, I never go into the club without being asked, twenty times a day, which of the Miss Moseleys Mr. Roy is going to marry.”

“Which of the Miss Moseleys Mr. Roy is going to marry!”

She repeated the words, as if to gain time and to be certain she heard them rightly.  No fear of her blushing now; every pulse in her heart stood dead still; and then she nerved herself to meet the necessity of the occasion.

“David, you surely do not consider what you are saying.  This is a most extraordinary idea.”

“It is a most extraordinary idea; in fact, I call it ridiculous, monstrous:  an old battered fellow like him, who has knocked about the world, Heaven knows where, all these years, to come home, and, because he has got a lot of money, think to go and marry one of these nice, pretty girls.  They wouldn’t have him, I believe that; but nobody else believes it; and every body seems to think it the most natural thing possible.  What do you say?”

“I?”

“Surely you don’t think it right, or even possible?  But, Auntie, it might turn out a rather awkward affair, and you ought to take my advice, and stop it in time.”

“How?”

“Why, by stepping him out of the house.  You and he are great friends:  if he had any notion of marrying, I suppose he would mention it to you—­he ought.  It would be a cowardly trick to come and steal one of your chickens from under your wing.  Wouldn’t it?  Do say something, instead of merely echoing what I say.  It really is a serious matter, though you don’t think so.”

“Yes, I do think so,” said Miss Williams, at last; “and I would stop it if I thought I had any right.  But Mr. Roy is quite able to manage his own affairs; and he is not so very old—­not more than five-and-twenty years older than—­Helen.”

“Bother Helen!  I beg her pardon, she is a dear good girl.  But do you think any man would look at Helen when there was Janetta?”