’But suppose I ask you to try and get her to see the affair sensibly?’

‘Sensibly?  What a word to use!’

‘The right word, I think.’

’What a vexatious boy you are!  You don’t really think so at all.  You only speak so because you like to tease me.’

’Well, you certainly do look pretty when you’re defending the castles in the air.  Give me a kiss.’

’Indeed, I shall not.  Tell me seriously what you mean.  What does Mrs. Waltham think about it?’

’Give me a kiss, and I’ll tell you.  If not, I’ll go away and leave you to find out everything as best you can.’

‘Oh, Alfred, you’re a sad tyrant!’

’Of course I am.  But it’s a benevolent despotism.  Well, mother wants Adela to accept him.  In fact, she asked me if I didn’t think you’d help us.  Of course I said you would.’

’Then you were very hasty.  I’m not joking now, Alfred.  I think of Adela in a way you very likely can’t understand.  It would be shocking, oh! shocking, to try and make her marry him if she doesn’t really wish to.’

‘No fear!  We shan’t manage that.’

‘And surely wouldn’t wish to?’

’I don’t know.  Girls often can’t see what’s best for them.  I say, you understand that all this is in confidence?’

’Of course I do.  But it’s a confidence I had rather not have received.  I shall be miserable, I know that.’

‘Then you’re a little—­goose.’

‘You were going to call me something far worse.’

’Give me credit, then, for correcting myself.  You’ll have to help us, Lettycoco.’

The girl kept silence.  Then for a time the conversation became graver.  It was interrupted precisely at the end of the granted hour.

Letty went to see her friend on Sunday afternoon, and the two shut themselves up in the dainty little chamber.  Adela was in low spirits; with her a most unusual state.  She sat with her hands crossed on her lap, and the sunny light of her eyes was dimmed.  When she had tried for a while to talk of ordinary things, Letty saw a tear glisten upon her cheek.

‘What is the matter, love?’

Adela was in sore need of telling her troubles, and Letty was the only one to whom she could do so.  In such spirit-gentle words as could express the perplexities of her mind she told what a source of pain her mother’s conversation had been to her of late, and how she dreaded what might still be to come.

’It is so dreadful to think, Letty, that mother is encouraging him.  She thinks it is for my happiness; she is offended if I try to say what I suffer.  Oh, I couldn’t!  I couldn’t!’

She put her palms before her face; her maidenhood shamed to speak of these things even to her bosom friend.

‘Can’t you show him, darling, that—­that he mustn’t hope anything?’

’How can I do so?  It is impossible to be rude, and everything else it is so easy to misunderstand.’