Bulsted, the marriage of this and that young lady, a legal contention between my grandfather and Lady Maria Higginson, the wife of a rich manufacturer newly located among us, on account of a right of encampment on Durstan heath, my grandfather taking side with the gipsies, and beating her ladyship—­a friend of Heriot’s, by the way.  Concerning Heriot, my aunt Dorothy was in trouble.  She could not, she said, approve his behaviour in coming to this neighbourhood at all, and she hinted that I might induce him to keep away.  I mentioned Julia Bulsted’s being in mourning, merely to bring in her name tentatively.

‘Ay, mourning’s her outer rig, never doubt,’ said the squire.  ’Flick your whip at her, she ’s a charitable soul, Judy Bulsted!  She knits stockings for the poor.  She’d down and kiss the stump of a sailor on a stick o’ timber.  All the same, she oughtn’t to be alone.  Pity she hasn’t a baby.  You and I’ll talk it over by-and-by, Harry.’

Kiomi was spoken of, and Lady Maria Higginson, and then Heriot.

‘M-m-m-m rascal!’ hummed the squire.  ’There’s three, and that’s not enough for him.  Six months back a man comes over from Surreywards, a farm he calls Dipwell, and asks after you, Harry; rigmaroles about a handsome lass gone off . . . some scoundrel!  You and I’ll talk it over by-and-by, Harry.’

Janet raised and let fall her eyebrows.  The fiction, that so much having been said, an immediate show of reserve on such topics preserved her in ignorance of them, was one she subscribed to merely to humour the squire.  I was half in doubt whether I disliked or admired her want of decent hypocrisy.  She allowed him to suppose that she did not hear, but spoke as a party to the conversation.  My aunt Dorothy blamed Julia.  The squire thundered at Heriot; Janet, liking both, contented herself with impartial comments.

‘I always think in these cases that the women must be the fools,’ she said.  Her affectation was to assume a knowledge of the world and all things in it.  We rode over to Julia’s cottage, on the outskirts of the estate now devolved upon her husband.  Irish eyes are certainly bewitching lights.  I thought, for my part, I could not do as the captain was doing, serving his country in foreign parts, while such as these were shining without a captain at home.  Janet approved his conduct, and was right.  ’What can a wife think the man worth who sits down to guard his house-door?’ she answered my slight innuendo.  She compared the man to a kennel-dog.  ‘This,’ said I, ‘comes of made-up matches,’ whereat she was silent.

Julia took her own view of her position.  She asked me whether it was not dismal for one who was called a grass widow, and was in reality a salt-water one, to keep fresh, with a lapdog, a cook, and a maid-servant, and a postman that passed the gate twenty times for twice that he opened it, and nothing to look for but this disappointing creature day after day!  At first she was shy, stole out a coy line of fingers