‘Lily, don’t say that.’

’But I do say it.  A man may assure himself that he will find for himself a wife who shall be learned, or beautiful, or six feet high, if he wishes it, or who has red hair, or red eyes, or red cheeks—­just what he pleases; and he may go about till he finds it, as you can go about and match your worsteds.  You are a fool if you buy a colour you don’t want.  But we can never match our worsteds for that other piece of work, but are obliged to take any colour that comes—­and, therefore, it is that we make such a jumble of it!  Here’s mamma.  We must not be philosophical before her.  Mamma, Major Grantly has—­skedaddled.’

‘Oh, Lily, what a word!’

’But, oh, mamma, what a thing!  Fancy his going away and not saying a word to anybody!’

‘If he had anything to say to Grace, I suppose he said it.’

’He asked her to marry him, of course.  We none of us had any doubt about that.  He swore to her that she and none but she should be his wife—­and all that kind of thing.  But he seems to have done it in the most prosaic way;—­and now he has gone away without saying a word to any of us.  I shall never speak to him again—­unless Grace asks me.’

‘Grace, my dear, may I congratulate you?’ said Mrs Dale.

Grace did not answer, as Lily was too quick for her.  ’Oh, she has refused him, of course.  But, Major Grantly is a man of too much sense to expect that he should succeed the first time.  Let me see; this is the fourteenth.  These clocks run fourteen days, and therefore, you may expect him again about the twenty-eighth.  For myself, I think you are giving him an immense deal of unnecessary trouble, and that if he left you in the lurch it would only serve you right; but you have the world with you, I’m told.  A girl is supposed to tell a man two fibs before she may tell him one truth.’

’I told him no fib, Lily.  I told him that I would not marry him and I will not.’

‘But why not, dear Grace?’ said Mrs Dale.

‘Because the people say that papa is a thief!’ Having said this, Grace walked slowly out of the room, and neither Mrs Dale nor Lily attempted to follow her.

‘She’s as good as gold,’ said Lily, when the door was closed.

‘And he;—­what of him?’

’I think he is good too; but she has told me nothing yet of what he has said to her.  He must be good, or he would not have come down here after her.  But I don’t wonder at his coming, because she is so beautiful!  Once or twice as we were walking back today, I thought her face was the most lovely that I had ever seen.  And did you see her just now, as she spoke of her father?’

‘Oh, yes;—­I saw her.’

‘Think what she will be in two or three years’ time, when she becomes a woman.  She talks French, and Italian, and Hebrew for anything that I know; and she is perfectly beautiful.  I never saw a more lovely figure;—­and she has spirit enough for a goddess.  I don’t think that Major Grantly is such a fool after all.’