It had passed unseen by Sir Willoughby.  The observer was the one who could also supply the key of the secret.  Miss Dale had found Colonel De Craye in company with Miss Middleton at her gateway.  They were laughing and talking together like friends of old standing, De Craye as Irish as he could be:  and the Irish tongue and gentlemanly manner are an irresistible challenge to the opening steps of familiarity when accident has broken the ice.  Flitch was their theme; and:  “Oh, but if we go tip to Willoughby hand in hand; and bob a courtesy to ’m and beg his pardon for Mister Flitch, won’t he melt to such a pair of suppliants? of course he will!” Miss Middleton said he would not.  Colonel De Craye wagered he would; he knew Willoughby best.  Miss Middleton looked simply grave; a way of asserting the contrary opinion that tells of rueful experience.  “We’ll see,” said the colonel.  They chatted like a couple unexpectedly discovering in one another a common dialect among strangers.  Can there be an end to it when those two meet?  They prattle, they fill the minutes, as though they were violently to be torn asunder at a coming signal, and must have it out while they can; it is a meeting of mountain brooks; not a colloquy, but a chasing, impossible to say which flies, which follows, or what the topic, so interlinguistic are they and rapidly counterchanging.  After their conversation of an hour before, Laetitia watched Miss Middleton in surprise at her lightness of mind.  Clara bathed in mirth.  A boy in a summer stream shows not heartier refreshment of his whole being.  Laetitia could now understand Vernon’s idea of her wit.  And it seemed that she also had Irish blood.  Speaking of Ireland, Miss Middleton said she had cousins there, her only relatives.

“The laugh told me that,” said Colonel De Craye.

Laetitia and Vernon paced up and down the lawn.  Colonel De Craye was talking with English sedateness to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel.  Clara and young Crossjay strayed.

“If I might advise, I would say, do not leave the Hall immediately, not yet,” Laetitia said to Vernon.

“You know, then?”

“I cannot understand why it was that I was taken into her confidence.”

“I counselled it.”

“But it was done without an object that I can see.”

“The speaking did her good.”

“But how capricious! how changeful!”

“Better now than later.”

“Surely she has only to ask to be released?—­to ask earnestly:  if it is her wish.”

“You are mistaken.”

“Why does she not make a confidant of her father?”

“That she will have to do.  She wished to spare him.”

“He cannot be spared if she is to break the engagement.”

She thought of sparing him the annoyance.  “Now there’s to be a tussle, he must share in it.”

“Or she thought he might not side with her?”

“She has not a single instinct of cunning.  You judge her harshly.”