Was it Mrs. Baxendale or Mrs. Birks who at length gave him the hint which set his mind at work in another direction?  Possibly both about the same time, seeing that it was the occasion of Mrs. Baxendale’s first making acquaintance with his aunt that dated the beginning of new reflections In Wilfrid.  One or other of these ladies—­of course it was managed so delicately that he really could not have determined to which of them he owed the impulse—­succeeded in suggesting to him that he had missed certain obvious meanings in Beatrice’s behaviour whilst he resided with her at Dunfield.  Certainly, when he looked back at those days from his present standpoint, Beatrice did appear to have conducted herself singularly, the mode of her departure and leave-taking being above all curious.  Was it possible that—?  The question formed itself at last, and was the beginning of conviction.  He sought Beatrice’s society, at first merely for the sake of resolving his doubts, and behold, she no longer shrank from him as formerly.  Of course he might take it for granted that she knew the details of his story, seeing that her closest intimates, Mrs. Baxendale and Mrs. Birks, were ignorant of none of them.  Had she, then, waited for signs of his freedom?  Did his revival of the old tone in their conversations strike her as something meant to be significant, meant to convey to her certain suggestions?  It was so in point of fact, and Wilfrid could not be long, his eyes now open, without convincing himself that the girl loved him ardently, that it cost her struggles with herself to avoid a revelation of her feeling.  How did it affect him?

Naturally, he was flattered.  It afforded another instance of his lordship among men; a woman whom others longed for desperately and in vain was his when he chose to extend his hand to her.  He saw, too, an appropriateness in the chance which offered him such a wife; Beatrice was in harmony with the future to which he aspired.  Her property joined to his would make him so wealthy that he might aim almost at anything; political and social progress would aid each other, both rapid.  Beatrice was in many respects brilliant; there was no station that she would not become; she had the tastes and habits of society.  He compared her with his career; she represented worldly success, the things which glitter on the outside—­action, voice; even her magnificent powers of song he used as parallel—­the gods forgive him!—­to his own forensic abilities.  Supposing he must marry early, and not rather expect the day when he might bid for a partner from a rank considerably above his own, Beatrice was clearly the one wife for him.  She would devote herself with ardour to his worldly interests—­for he began to understand that the divergence of her expressed views meant little in comparison with her heart’s worship—­and would enable him immediately to exchange the social inferiority of bachelor life for the standing of a man with his own very substantial roof-tree; she would have her drawing-room, which might be made a salon, where politics and art might rule alternately.