“Marry after a proper fashion, and you’ll get rid of all that.”

“I’ll think about it, but in the meantime what can I say to this young woman?  When I acknowledge that I kissed ham, of course I encouraged hopes.”

“No doubt”

“But St. Anthony would have had to kiss this young woman if she had made her attack upon him as she did on me; and after all a kiss doesn’t go for everything.  These are things, Penwether, that must not be inquired into too curiously.  But I won’t marry her though it were a score of kisses.  And now what must I do?” Sir George said that he would take till the next morning to think about it,—­ meaning to make a draft of the reply which he thought his brother-in-law might best send to the lady.

CHAPTER XIX

It cannot be Arranged

When Reginald Morton received his aunt’s letter he understood from it more than she had intended.  Of course the man to whom allusion was made was Mr. Twentyman; and of course the discomfort at. home had come from Mrs. Masters’ approval of that suitor’s claim.  Reginald, though he had seen but little of the inside of the attorney’s household, thought it very probable that the stepmother would make the girl’s home very uncomfortable for her.  Though he knew well all the young farmer’s qualifications as a husband,—­ namely that he was well to do in the world and bore a good character for honesty and general conduct,—­still he thoroughly, nay heartily approved of Mary’s rejection of the man’s hand.  It seemed to him to be sacrilege that such a one should have given to him such a woman.  There was, to his thinking, something about Mary Masters that made it altogether unfit that she should pass her life as the mistress of Chowton Farm, and he honoured her for the persistence of her refusal.  He took his pipe and went out into the garden in order that he might think of it all as he strolled round his little domain.

But why should he think so much about it?  Why should he take so deep an interest in the matter?  What was it to him whether Mary Masters married after her kind, or descended into what he felt to be an inferior manner of life?  Then he tried to tell himself what were the gifts in the girl’s possession which made her what she was, and he pictured her to himself, running over all her attributes.  It was not that she specially excelled in beauty.  He had seen Miss Trefoil as she was being driven about the neighbourhood, and having heard much of the young lady as the future wife of his own cousin, had acknowledged to himself that she was very handsome.  But he had thought at the same time that under no possible circumstances could he have fallen in love with Miss Trefoil.  He believed that he did not care much for female beauty, and yet he felt that he could sit and look at Mary Masters by the hour together.  There was a quiet even composure about her, always lightened by the brightness of her modest eyes, which