“You may receive me, I should think.  Your sister is my cousin’s wife.”  Harry’s matter-of-fact argument did as well as anything else, for it turned her thought at the moment.

“My sister, Harry!  If there was nothing to make us friends but our connection through Sir Hugh Clavering, I do not know that I should be particularly anxious to see you.  How unmanly he has been, and how cruel.”

“Very cruel,” said Harry.  Then he thought of Archie and Archie’s suit.  “But he is willing to change all that now.  Hermione asked me the other day to persuade you to go to Clavering.”

“And have you come here to use your eloquence for that purpose?  I will never go to Clavering again, Harry, unless it should be yours and your wife should offer to receive me.  Then I’d pack up for the dear, dull, solemn old place though I was on the other side of Europe.”

“It will never be mine.”

“Probably not, and probably, therefore, I shall never be there again.  No; I can forgive an injury, but not an insult—­not an insult such as that.  I will not go to Clavering; so, Harry, you may save your eloquence.  Hermione I shall be glad to see whenever she will come to me.  If you can persuade her to that, you will persuade her to a charity.”

“She goes nowhere, I think, without his—­his—­”

“Without his permission.  Of course she does not.  That, I suppose, is all as it should be.  And he is such a tyrant that he will give no such permission.  He would tell her, I suppose, that her sister was no fit companion for her.”

“He could not say that now, as he has asked you there.”

“Ah, I don’t know that.  He would say one thing first and another after, just as it would suit him.  He has some object in wishing that I should go there, I suppose.”  Harry, who knew the object, and who was too faithful to betray Lady Clavering, even though he was altogether hostile to his cousin Archie’s suit, felt a little proud of his position, but said nothing in answer to this.  “But I shall not go; nor will I see him, or go to his house when he comes up to London.  When do they come, Harry?”

“He is in town, now.”

“What a nice husband, is he not?  And when does Hermione come?”

“I do not know; she did not say.  Little Hughy is ill, and that may keep her.”

“After all, Harry, I may have to pack up and go to Clavering even yet—­that is, if the mistress of the house will have me.”

“Never in the way you mean, Lady Ongar.  Do not propose to kill all my relations in order that I might have their property.  Archie intends to marry, and have a dozen children.”

“Archie marry!  Who will have him?  But such men as he are often in the way by marrying some cookmaid at last.  Archie is Hugh’s body-slave.  Fancy being body-slave to Hugh Clavering!  He has two, and poor Hermy is the other; only he prefers not to have Hermy near him, which is lucky for her.  Here is some tea.  Let us sit down and be comfortable, and talk no more about our horrid relations.  I don’t know what made me speak of them.  I did not mean it.”