Stanbury found some difficulty in making himself a ‘good boy’ in Lady Rowley’s presence; and Lady Rowley herself, for sometime, felt very strongly the awkwardness of the meeting.  She had never formally recognised the young man as her daughter’s accepted suitor, and as not yet justified in doing so by any permission from Sir Marmaduke; but, as the young people had been for the last hour or two alone together, with her connivance and sanction, it was indispensable that she should in some way signify her parental adherence to the arrangement.  Nora began by talking about Emily, and Trevelyan’s condition and mode of living were discussed.  Then Lady Rowley said something about their coming journey, and Hugh, with a lucky blunder, spoke of Nora’s intended return to Italy.  ‘We don’t know how that may be,’ said Lady Rowley.  ‘Her papa still wishes her to go back with us.’

‘Mamma, you know that that is impossible,’ said Nora.

‘Not impossible, my love.’

‘But she will not go back,’ said Hugh.  ’Lady Rowley, you would not propose to separate us by such a distance as that?’

‘It is Sir Marmaduke that you must ask.’

‘Mamma, mamma!’ exclaimed Nora, rushing to her mother’s side, ’it is not papa that we must ask not now.  We want you to be our friend.  Don’t we, Hugh?  And, mamma, if you will really be our friend, of course, papa will come round.’

‘My dear Nora!’

’You know he will, mamma; and you know that you mean to be good and kind to us.  Of course I can’t go back to the Islands with you.  How could I go so far and leave him behind?  He might have half-a-dozen wives before I could get back to him—­’

‘If you have not more trust in him than that—­’

‘Long engagements are awful bores,’ said Hugh, finding it to be necessary that he also should press forward his argument.

‘I can trust him as far as I can see him,’ said Nora, ’and therefore I do not want to lose sight of him altogether.’

Lady Rowley of course gave way and embraced her accepted son-in-law.  After all it might have been worse.  He saw his way clearly, he said, to making six hundred a year, and did not at all doubt that before long he would do better than that.  He proposed that they should be married some time in the autumn, but was willing to acknowledge that much must depend on the position of Trevelyan and his wife.  He would hold himself ready at any moment, he said, to start to Italy, and would do all that could be done by a brother.  Then Lady Rowley gave him her blessing, and kissed him again, and Nora kissed him too, and hung upon him, and did not push him away at all when his arm crept round her waist.  And that feeling came upon him which must surely be acknowledged by all engaged young men when they first find themselves encouraged by mammas in the taking of liberties which they have hitherto regarded as mysteries to be hidden, especially from maternal eyes, that feeling of being a fine fat calf decked out with ribbons for a sacrifice.