“The question of a widow marrying!  What is this woman, whom papa wishes to force on us as our guest?  Why should he do that?  Why should he evince anxiety with regard to our opinion of the decency of widows contemplating re-union?  Remember previous words and hints when we lived in the city!”

“This at least you may spare us,” said Cornelia, ruffling offended.

Adela smiled in tenderness for her beauty.

“But, it is important, if we are following a track, dear.  Think over it.”

“No!” cried Arabella.  “It cannot be true.  We might easily have guessed this, if we ever dreamed of impossibilities.”

“In such cases, when appearances lean in one direction, set principles in the opposite balance,” added Cornelia.  “What Adela apprehends may seem to impend, but we know that papa is incapable of doing it.  To know that, shuts the gates of suspicion.  She has allowed herself to be troubled by a ghastly nightmare.”

Adela believed in her own judgement too completely not to be sure that her sisters were, perhaps unknowingly, disguising a slowness of perception they were ashamed of, by thus partially accusing her of giddiness.  She bit her lip.

“Very well; if you have no fears whatever, you need not abandon the idea of Besworth.”

“I abandon nothing,” said Arabella.  “If I have to make a choice, I take that which is least objectionable.  I am chagrined, most, at the idea that Wilfrid has been treacherous.”

“Practical,” Cornelia suggested.  “You are not speaking of one of our sex.”

Questions were then put to Adela, whether Mr. Pole had spoken in the manner of one who was prompted:  whether he hesitated as he spoke:  whether, in short, Wilfrid was seen behind his tongue.  Adela resolved that Wilfrid should have one protectress.

“You are entirely mistaken in ascribing treachery to him,” she said.  “It is papa that is changed.  You may suppose it to be without any reason, if you please.  I would tell you to study him for yourselves, only I am convinced that these special private interviews are anything but good policy, and are strictly to be avoided, unless of course, as in the present instance, we have something directly to do.”

Toward dawn the ladies had decreed that it was policy to be quite passive, and provoke no word of Mrs. Chump by making any allusion to Besworth, and by fencing with the mention of the place.

As they rarely failed to carry out any plan deliberately conceived by them, Mr. Pole was astonished to find that Besworth was altogether dropped.  After certain scattered attempts to bring them upon Besworth, he shrugged, and resigned himself, but without looking happy.

Indeed he looked so dismal that the ladies began to think he had a great longing for Besworth.  And yet he did not go there, or even praise it to the discredit of Brookfield!  They were perplexed.

“Let me ask you how it is,” said Cornelia to Mr. Barrett, “that a person whom we know—­whose actions and motives are as plain to us as though discerned through a glass, should at times produce a completer mystification than any other creature?  Or have you not observed it?”