“That does not prevent its being very nice to dine there,” said Mrs. Cavely; “and it shall be our table for good if I have any management.”

“You mean me, ma’am,” bellowed Tinman.

“Not at all,” she breathed, in dulcet contrast.  “You are good-looking, Martin, but you have not half such pretty eyes as the person I mean.  I never ventured to dream of managing you, Martin.  I am thinking of the people at Elba.”

“But why this extraordinary treatment of me, Martha?”

“She’s a child, having her head turned by those Fellinghams.  But she’s honourable; she has sworn to me she would be honourable.”

“You do think I may as well give him a fright?” Tinman inquired hungrily.

“A sort of hint; but very gentle, Martin.  Do be gentle—­casual like—­as if you did n’t want to say it.  Get him on his Gippsland.  Then if he brings you to words, you can always laugh back, and say you will go to Kew and see the Fernery, and fancy all that, so high, on Helvellyn or the Downs.  Why”—­Mrs. Cavely, at the end of her astute advices and cautionings, as usual, gave loose to her natural character—­“Why that man came back to England at all, with his boastings of Gippsland, I can’t for the life of me find out.  It ’s a perfect mystery.”

“It is,” Tinman sounded his voice at a great depth, reflectively.  Glad of taking the part she was perpetually assuming of late, he put out his hand and said:  “But it may have been ordained for our good, Martha.”

“True, dear,” said she, with an earnest sentiment of thankfulness to the Power which had led him round to her way of thinking and feeling.

CHAPTER XI

Annette had gone to the big metropolis, which burns in colonial imaginations as the sun of cities, and was about to see something of London, under the excellent auspices of her new friend, Mary Fellingham, and a dense fog.  She was alarmed by the darkness, a little in fear, too, of Herbert; and these feelings caused her to chide herself for leaving her father.

Hearing her speak of her father sadly, Herbert kindly proposed to go down to Crikswich on the very day of her coming.  She thanked him, and gave him a taste of bitterness by smiling favourably on his offer; but as he wished her to discern and take to heart the difference between one man and another, in the light of a suitor, he let her perceive that it cost him heavy pangs to depart immediately, and left her to brood on his example.  Mary Fellingham liked Annette.  She thought her a sensible girl of uncultivated sensibilities, the reverse of thousands; not commonplace, therefore; and that the sensibilities were expanding was to be seen in her gradual unreadiness to talk of her engagement to Mr. Tinman, though her intimacy with Mary warmed daily.  She considered she was bound to marry the man at some distant date, and did not feel unhappiness yet.  She had only felt uneasy when she had to greet and converse with her intended; especially when the London young lady had been present.  Herbert’s departure relieved her of the pressing sense of contrast.  She praised him to Mary for his extreme kindness to her father, and down in her unsounded heart desired that her father might appreciate it even more than she did.