“Does your little girl go with you, Lady Honoria?” asked Elizabeth.

“Well, no, I think not.  I can’t bear parting with her—­you know how hard it is when one has only one child.  But I think she would be so bored where I am going to stay, for there are no other children there; and besides, she positively adores the sea.  So I shall have to leave her to her father’s tender mercies, poor dear.”

“I hope Effie will survive it, I am sure,” said Geoffrey laughing.

“I suppose that your husband is going to stay on at Mrs. Jones’s,” said the clergyman.

“Really, I don’t know.  What are you going to do, Geoffrey?  Mrs. Jones’s rooms are rather expensive for people in our impoverished condition.  Besides, I am sure that she cannot look after Effie.  Just think, she has eight children of her own, poor old dear.  And I must take Anne with me; she is Effie’s French nurse, you know, a perfect treasure.  I am going to stay in a big house, and my experience of those big houses is, that one never gets waited on at all unless one takes a maid.  You see, what is everybody’s business is nobody’s business.  I’m sure I don’t know how you will get on with the child, Geoffrey; she takes such a lot of looking after.”

“Oh, don’t trouble about that, Honoria,” he answered.  “I daresay that Effie and I will manage somehow.”

Here one of those peculiar gleams of intelligence which marked the advent of a new idea passed across Elizabeth’s face.  She was sitting next her father, and bending, whispered to him.  Beatrice saw it and made a motion as though to interpose, but before she could do so Mr. Granger spoke.

“Look here, Mr. Bingham,” he said, “if you want to move, would you like a room here?  Terms strictly moderate, but can’t afford to put you up for nothing you know, and living rough and ready.  You’d have to take us as you find us; but there is a dressing-room next to my room, where your little girl could sleep, and my daughters would look after her between them, and be glad of the job.”

Again Beatrice opened her lips as though to speak, but closed them without speaking.  Thus do our opportunities pass before we realise that they are at hand.

Instinctively Geoffrey had glanced towards Beatrice.  He did not know if this idea was agreeable to her.  He knew that her work was hard, and he did not wish to put extra trouble upon her, for he guessed that the burden of looking after Effie would ultimately fall upon her shoulders.  But her face told him nothing:  it was quite passive and apparently indifferent.

“You are very kind, Mr. Granger,” he said, hesitating.  “I don’t want to go away from Bryngelly just at present, and it would be a good plan in some ways, that is if the trouble to your daughters would not be too much.”

“I am sure that it is an excellent plan,” broke in Lady Honoria, who feared lest difficulties should arise as to her appropriation of Anne’s services; “how lucky that I happened to mention it.  There will be no trouble about our giving up the rooms at Mrs. Jones’s, because I know she has another application for them.”