’Sorry!  And am I not sorry?  Sorrow is no sufficient word.  I am broken-hearted.  Lady Lufton, it is killing me.  It is indeed.  I love him; I love him;—­I love him as you have loved your son.  But what is the use?  What can he be to me when he shall have married the daughter of such a man as that?’

Lady Lufton sat for a while silent, thinking of a certain episode in her own life.  There had been a time when her son was desirous of making a marriage which she had thought would break her heart.  She had for a time moved heaven and earth—­as far as she knew how to move them—­to prevent the marriage.  But at last she had yielded—­not from lack of power, for the circumstances had been such that at the moment of yielding she had still the power in her hand of staying the marriage—­but she had yielded because she had perceived that her son was in earnest.  She had yielded, and had kissed the dust; but from the moment in which her lips had so touched the ground, they had taken great joy in the daughter in whom her son had brought into the house.  Since that she had learned to think that young people might perhaps be right, and that old people might perhaps be wrong.  This trouble of her friend the archdeacon’s was very like her own trouble.  ‘And he is engaged to her now?’ she said, when those thoughts had passed through her mind.

’Yes;—­that is, no.  I am not sure.  I do not know how to make myself sure.’

‘I am sure Major Grantly will tell you all the truth as it exists.’

’Yes; he’ll tell me the truth—­as far as he knows it.  I do not see that there is much anxiety to spare me in that matter.  He is desirous rather of making me understand that I have no power of saving him from his own folly.  Of course I have no power of saving him.’

‘But is he engaged to her?’

‘He says that she has refused him.  But of course that means nothing.’

Again the archdeacon’s position was very like Lady Lufton’s position, as it had existed before her son’s marriage.  In that case also the young lady, who was now Lady Lufton’s own daughter and dearest friend, had refused the lover who proposed to her, although the marriage was so much to her advantage—­loving him too, the while, with her whole heart, as it was natural to suppose that Grace Crawley might so love her lover.  The more she thought of the similarity of the stories, the stronger were her sympathies on the side of poor Grace.  Nevertheless, she would comfort her old friend if she knew how; and of course she could not but admit to herself that the match was one which must be a cause of real sorrow to him.  ‘I don’t know why her refusal should mean nothing,’ said Lady Lufton.

’Of course a girl refuses at first—­a girl, I mean, in such circumstances as hers.  She can’t but feel that more is offered to her than she ought to take, and that she is bound to go through the ceremony of declining.  But my anger is not with her, Lady Lufton.’