“Was Miss Harlow with her?”

“No.  There was a tennis game at Lady Thirsk’s.  I suppose she was there.”

“Have you seen her lately?”

“She took tea with me last Wednesday.  What a beauty she is!  Such color in her cheeks!  It was like the apricots when the sun was on them.  Such shining black hair so wonderfully braided and coiled!  Such sparkling, flashing black eyes!  Such a tall, splendid figure!  Such a rosy mouth!  It seemed as if it was made for smiles and kisses.”

“And she walks like a queen, mother!”

“She does that.”

“And she is so bright and independent!”

“Well, John, she is.  There’s no denying it.”

“She is finely educated and also related to the best Yorkshire families.  Could I marry any better woman, mother?”

“Well, John, as a rule men don’t approve of poor wives, but Miss Jane Harlow is a fortune in herself.”

“Two months ago I heard that Lord Thirsk was very much in love with her.  I saw him with her very often.  I was very unhappy, but I could not interfere, you know, could I?”

“So you went off to sea, and left mother and Harry and your business to anybody’s care.  It wasn’t like you, John.”

“No, it was not.  I wanted you, mother, a dozen times a day, and I was half-afraid to come back to you, lest I should find Miss Jane married or at least engaged.”

“She is neither one nor the other, or I am much mistaken.  Whatever are you afraid of?  Jane Harlow is only a woman beautiful and up to date, she is not a ‘goddess excellently fair’ like the woman you are always singing about, not she!  I’m sure I often wonder where she got her beauty and high spirit.  Her father was just a proud hanger-on to his rich relations; he lived and died fighting his wants and his debts.  Her mother is very near as badly off—­a poor, wuttering, little creature, always fearing and trembling for the day she never saw.”

“Perhaps this poverty and dependence may make her marry Lord Thirsk.  He is rich enough to get the girl he wants.”

“His money would not buy Jane, if she did not like him; and she doesn’t like him.”

“How do you know that, mother?”

“I asked her.  While we were drinking our tea, I asked her if she were going to make herself Lady Thirsk.  She made fun of him.  She mocked the very idea.  She said he had no chin worth speaking of and no back to his head and so not a grain of forthput in him of any kind.  ’Why, he can’t play a game of tennis,’ she said, ’and when he loses it he nearly cries, and what do you think, Mrs. Hatton, of a lover like that?’ Those were her words, John.”

“And you believe she was in earnest?”

“Yes, I do.  Jane is too proud and too brave a girl to lie—­unless——­”

“Unless what, mother?”

“It was to her interest.”

“Tell me all she said.  Her words are life or death to me.”