‘I reserve a point,’ he said, and not playfully.

She appeared distressed, and courted a change of expression in his features, and I have to confess that never having seen her gaze upon any one save myself in that fashion, which was with her very winning, especially where some of her contralto tones of remonstrance or entreaty aided it, I felt as a man does at a neighbour’s shadow cast over his rights of property.

Heriot dropped to the rear:  I was glad to leave her with Temple, and glad to see them canter ahead together on the sand of tie heaths.

‘She has done it,’ Heriot burst out abruptly.  ‘She has done it!’ he said again.  ’Upon my soul, I never wished in my life before that I was a marrying man:  I might have a chance of ending worth something.  She has won the squire round with a thundering fib, and you’re to have the German if you can get her.  Don’t be in a hurry.  The squire ’ll speak to you to-night:  but think over it.  Will you?  Think what a girl this is.  I believe on my honour no man ever had such an offer of a true woman.  Come, don’t think it’s Heriot speaking—­I’ve always liked her, of course.  But I have always respected her, and that’s not of course.  Depend upon it, a woman who can be a friend of men is the right sort of woman to make a match with.  Do you suppose she couldn’t have a dozen fellows round her at the lift of her finger? the pick of the land!  I’d trust her with an army.  I tell you, Janet Ilchester ’s the only girl alive who’ll double the man she marries.  I don’t know another who wouldn’t make the name of wife laugh the poor devil out of house and company.  She’s firm as a rock; and sweet as a flower on it!  Will that touch you?  Bah!  Richie, let’s talk like men.  I feel for her because she’s fond of you, and I know what it is when a girl like that sets her heart on a fellow.  There,’ he concluded, ’I ’d ask you to go down on your knees and pray before you decide against her!’

Heriot succeeded in raising a certain dull indistinct image in my mind of a well-meaning girl, to whom I was bound to feel thankful, and felt so.  I thanked Heriot, too, for his friendly intentions.  He had never seen the Princess Ottilia.  And at night I thanked my grandfather.  He bore himself, on the whole, like the good and kindly old gentleman Janet loved to consider him.  He would not stand in my light, he said, recurring to that sheet-anchor of a tolerant sentence whenever his forehead began to gather clouds.  He regretted that Janet was no better than her sex in her preference for rakes, and wished me to the deuce for bringing Heriot into the house, and not knowing when I was lucky.  ‘German grandchildren, eh!’ he muttered.  No Beltham had ever married a foreigner.  What was the time fixed between us for the marriage?  He wanted to see his line safe before he died.  ‘How do I know this foreign woman’ll bear?’ he asked, expecting an answer.  His hand was on the back of a chair, grasping and rocking it; his eyes bent stormily on the carpet; they were set blinking rapidly after a glance at me.  Altogether his self-command was creditable to Janet’s tuition.