’You need not feel uncomfortable about Mrs. King; the house is really mine, not hers, and father always had his house full of company.  I am doing my duty to him in taking you in, and in making a feast to please Eliz when the stepmother happens to be away and I can do it peaceably.  And when she happens to be here I do my duty to him by keeping the peace with her.’

‘Is she unkind to you?’ he asked, with the ready, overflowing pity that young men are apt to give to pretty women who complain.

But she would have him know that she had not complained.

There was no bitterness in her tone—­her philosophy of life was all sweetness.  ’No!  Bless her!  God made her, I suppose, just as He made us; so, according to the way she is made, she packs away all the linen and silver, she keeps this room shut up for fear it will get worn out, and we never see any visitors.  But to-day she went away to St. Philippe to see a dying man—­I think she was going to convert him or something; but he took a long time to die; and now we may be snowed up for days, and we are going to have a perfectly glorious time.’  She added hospitably, ’You need not feel under the slightest obligation, for it gives us pleasure to have you, and I know that father would have taken you in.’

Courthope rose up and followed her glance, almost an adoring glance, to the portrait he had before observed.  He went and stood again face to face with it.

A goodly man was painted there, dressed in a judge’s robe.  Courthope read the lineaments by the help of the living interpretation of the daughter’s likeness.  Benevolence in the mouth, a love of good cheer and good friends in the rounded cheeks, a lurking sense of the poetry of life in the quiet eyes, and in the brow reason and a keen sense of right proportion dominant.  He would have given something to have exchanged a quiet word with the man in the portrait, whose hospitality, living after him, he was now receiving.

Madge had been arranging the logs to her satisfaction, she would not accept Courthope’s aid, and now she told him who were going to dine with them.  She had great zest for the play.

’Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, of course, and we thought we might have Mr. Knightley, because he is a squire and not so very young, even though he is not yet married.  Miss Bates, of course, and the Westons.  Mrs. Dashwood has declined, of which we are rather glad, but we are having Mrs. Jennings.’  So she went on with her list.  ’We could not help asking Sir Charles with Lord and Lady G——­, because he is so important; but Grandmamma Shirley is “mortifying” at present.  She wrote that she could not stand “so rich a regale.”  Sir Hargrave Pollexfen will come afterwards with Harriet, and I am thankful to say that Lady Clementina is not in England at present, so could not be invited.’  She stopped, looking up at him freshly to make a comment.  ’Don’t you detest Lady Clementina?’