“Then why do you want to keep him out of the house?”

Gertrude looked at Lizzie Acton, and then looked away.

“Should you want me to live in the house with you, Lizzie?” asked Clifford.

“I hope you never will.  I hate you!” Such was this young lady’s reply.

“Father,” said Gertrude, stopping before Mr. Wentworth and smiling, with a smile the sweeter, as her smile always was, for its rarity; “do let them live in the little house over the way.  It will be lovely!”

Robert Acton had been watching her.  “Gertrude is right,” he said.  “Gertrude is the cleverest girl in the world.  If I might take the liberty, I should strongly recommend their living there.”

“There is nothing there so pretty as the northeast room,” Charlotte urged.

“She will make it pretty.  Leave her alone!” Acton exclaimed.

Gertrude, at his compliment, had blushed and looked at him:  it was as if some one less familiar had complimented her.  “I am sure she will make it pretty.  It will be very interesting.  It will be a place to go to.  It will be a foreign house.”

“Are we very sure that we need a foreign house?” Mr. Wentworth inquired.  “Do you think it desirable to establish a foreign house—­in this quiet place?”

“You speak,” said Acton, laughing, “as if it were a question of the poor Baroness opening a wine-shop or a gaming-table.”

“It would be too lovely!” Gertrude declared again, laying her hand on the back of her father’s chair.

“That she should open a gaming-table?” Charlotte asked, with great gravity.

Gertrude looked at her a moment, and then, “Yes, Charlotte,” she said, simply.

“Gertrude is growing pert,” Clifford Wentworth observed, with his humorous young growl.  “That comes of associating with foreigners.”

Mr. Wentworth looked up at his daughter, who was standing beside him; he drew her gently forward.  “You must be careful,” he said.  “You must keep watch.  Indeed, we must all be careful.  This is a great change; we are to be exposed to peculiar influences.  I don’t say they are bad.  I don’t judge them in advance.  But they may perhaps make it necessary that we should exercise a great deal of wisdom and self-control.  It will be a different tone.”

Gertrude was silent a moment, in deference to her father’s speech; then she spoke in a manner that was not in the least an answer to it.  “I want to see how they will live.  I am sure they will have different hours.  She will do all kinds of little things differently.  When we go over there it will be like going to Europe.  She will have a boudoir.  She will invite us to dinner—­very late.  She will breakfast in her room.”