“Did you indeed!” said Mrs. Mountstuart, humouring her excessive acuteness.

“I really did.  There is that dear good man on his feet again.  And looks agitated again.”

Mr. Dale had been compelled both by the lady’s voice and his interest in the subject to listen.  He had listened more than enough; he was exceedingly nervous.  He held on by his chair, afraid to quit his moorings, and “Manners!” he said to himself unconsciously aloud, as he cogitated on the libertine way with which these chartered great ladies of the district discussed his daughter.  He was heard and unnoticed.  The supposition, if any, would have been that he was admonishing himself.  At this juncture Sir Willoughby entered the drawing-room by the garden window, and simultaneously Dr. Middleton by the door.

CHAPTER XLVI

THE SCENE OF SIR WILLOUGHBY’S GENERALSHIP

History, we may fear, will never know the qualities of leadership inherent in Sir Willoughby Patterne to fit him for the post of Commander of an army, seeing that he avoided the fatigues of the service and preferred the honours bestowed in his country upon the quiet administrators of their own estates:  but his possession of particular gifts, which are military, and especially of the proleptic mind, which is the stamp and sign-warrant of the heaven-sent General, was displayed on every urgent occasion when, in the midst of difficulties likely to have extinguished one less alert than he to the threatening aspect of disaster, he had to manoeuvre himself.

He had received no intimation of Mr. Dale’s presence in his house, nor of the arrival of the dreaded women Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer:  his locked door was too great a terror to his domestics.  Having finished with Vernon, after a tedious endeavour to bring the fellow to a sense of the policy of the step urged on him, he walked out on the lawn with the desire to behold the opening of an interview not promising to lead to much, and possibly to profit by its failure.  Clara had been prepared, according to his directions, by Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, as Vernon had been prepared by him.  His wishes, candidly and kindly expressed both to Vernon and Mrs Mountstuart, were, that since the girl appeared disinclined to make him a happy man, she would make one of his cousin.  Intimating to Mrs. Mountstuart that he would be happier without her, he alluded to the benefit of the girl’s money to poor old Vernon, the general escape from a scandal if old Vernon could manage to catch her as she dropped, the harmonious arrangement it would be for all parties.  And only on the condition of her taking Vernon would he consent to give her up.  This he said imperatively, adding that such was the meaning of the news she had received relating to Laetitia Dale.  From what quarter had she received it? he asked.  She shuffled in her reply, made a gesture to signify that it was in