In return, he distantly indicated Richard’s majority.

How could Lady Blandish go and ask the young man to wait a year away from his wife?  Her instinct began to open a wide eye on the idol she worshipped.

When people do not themselves know what they mean, they succeed in deceiving and imposing upon others.  Not only was Lady Blandish mystified; Mrs. Doria, who pierced into the recesses of everybody’s mind, and had always been in the habit of reading off her brother from infancy, and had never known herself to be once wrong about him, she confessed she was quite at a loss to comprehend Austin’s principle.  “For principle he has,” said Mrs. Doria; “he never acts without one.  But what it is, I cannot at present perceive.  If he would write, and command the boy to await his return, all would be clear.  He allows us to go and fetch him, and then leaves us all in a quandary.  It must be some woman’s influence.  That is the only way to account for it.”

“Singular!” interjected Adrian, “what pride women have in their sex!  Well, I have to tell you, my dear aunt, that the day after to-morrow I hand my charge over to your keeping.  I can’t hold him in an hour longer.  I’ve had to leash him with lies till my invention’s exhausted.  I petition to have them put down to the chief’s account, but when the stream runs dry I can do no more.  The last was, that I had heard from him desiring me to have the South-west bedroom ready for him on Tuesday proximate.  ‘So!’ says my son, ‘I’ll wait till then,’ and from the gigantic effort he exhibited in coming to it, I doubt any human power’s getting him to wait longer.”

“We must, we must detain him,” said Mrs. Doria.  “If we do not, I am convinced Austin will do something rash that he will for ever repent.  He will marry that woman, Adrian.  Mark my words.  Now with any other young man!...  But Richard’s education! that ridiculous System!...  Has he no distraction? nothing to amuse him?”

“Poor boy!  I suppose he wants his own particular playfellow.”

The wise youth had to bow to a reproof.

“I tell you, Adrian, he will marry that woman.”

“My dear aunt!  Can a chaste man do aught more commendable?”

“Has the boy no object we can induce him to follow?—­If he had but a profession!”

“What say you to the regeneration of the streets of London, and the profession of moral-scavenger, aunt?  I assure you I have served a month’s apprenticeship with him.  We sally forth on the tenth hour of the night.  A female passes.  I hear him groan.  ’Is she one of them, Adrian?’ I am compelled to admit she is not the saint he deems it the portion of every creature wearing petticoats to be.  Another groan; an evident internal, ’It cannot be—­and yet!’...that we hear on the stage.  Rollings of eyes:  impious questionings of the Creator of the universe; savage mutterings against brutal males; and then we meet a second young person, and repeat the performance—­of which I am rather tired.  It would be all very well, but he turns upon me, and lectures me because I don’t hire a house, and furnish it for all the women one meets to live in in purity.  Now that’s too much to ask of a quiet man.  Master Thompson has latterly relieved me, I’m happy to say.”