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.

Janet met me next day, saying with some insolence (so it struck me from her liveliness):  ’Well, it’s all right, Harry?  Now you’ll be happy, I hope.  I did not shine in my reply.  Her amiable part appeared to be to let me see how brilliant and gracious the commonplace could be made to look.  She kept Heriot at the Grange, against the squire’s remonstrance and her mother’s.  ’It ’s to keep him out of harm’s way:  the women he knows are not of the best kind for him,’ she said, with astounding fatuity.  He submitted, and seemed to like it.  She must be teaching Temple to skate figures in the frost, with a great display of good-humoured patience, and her voice at musical pitches.  But her principal affectation was to talk on matters of business with Mr. Burgin and Mr. Trewint, the squire’s lawyer and bailiff, on mines and interest, on money and economical questions; not shrinking from politics either, until the squire cries out to the males assisting in the performance, ’Gad, she ’s a head as good as our half-dozen put together,’ and they servilely joined their fragmentary capitals in agreement.  She went so far as to retain Peterborough to teach her Latin.  He was idling in the expectation of a living in the squire’s gift.