‘What one expected, I suppose?’ said Mr. Athel.

’I suppose so.  Mr. Baxendale probably thinks the man has been applying for a position in your pantry.’

’Well, I was obliged, you know, to hint at my reasons for seeking information.’

’You did?  Then Beatrice knows all about it by this time.  As well that way as any other, I suppose.’

‘We shall have to take the matter like reasonable beings, Edith,’ said her brother, a trifle annoyed by her failure to countenance him.

’Yes; but you seem anxious that I should rejoice.  That would not be very reasonable.’

Something warned Mr. Athel that he had better abstain from rejoinder.  He pursed his lips and walked away.

Wilfrid had not spoken of the subject to his aunt since the disclosure at The Firs, and Mrs. Rossall was offended by his silence at least as much as by the prospect of his marrying Miss Hood.  Clearly he regarded the matter as no concern of hers, whereas a woman claims by natural right a share in the matrimonial projects of all her male relatives with whom she is on a footing of intimacy.  Perhaps the main cause of her displeasure in the first instance had been the fact that things should have got to such a pass without her having as much as suspected the imminence of danger; she regarded Emily as one that had outwitted her.  Dearly would she have liked to be able to meet her brother with the assertion that she had suspected it all along; the impossibility of doing so—­not from conscientious scruples, but because in that case it would clearly have been her duty to speak—­exasperated her disappointment at the frustration of the match she desired.  Now that she was getting used to the state of things, Wilfrid’s behaviour to her became the chief ground of her offence.  It seemed to her that at least he owed some kind of apology for the distress he had naturally caused her; in truth she would have liked him to undertake the task of winning her over to his side.  Between her and her nephew there had never existed a warm confidence, and Wilfrid’s present attitude was too much a confirmation of the feeling she had experienced now and then, that his affection was qualified with just a little contempt.  She was not, she knew, a strong-minded woman, and on that very account cared more for the special dominion of her sex.  Since Wilfrid had ceased to be a hobbledehoy, it would have become him to put a little more of the courtier into his manner towards her.  For are there not countries in which their degree of kin is no bar to matrimony?  Mrs. Rossall was of the women who like the flavour of respectful worship in all men who are neither father, brother, nor son.  Wilfrid had fallen short of this, and hence the affectation with which she had persisted in regarding him as a schoolboy.  His latest exploits were vastly more interesting to her than anything he had done in academic spheres, and she suffered a sense of exclusion in seeing him so determined to disregard her opinion.