There was indeed a pang as she thought of Gilbert; but she believed that Genevieve’s heart had never been really touched, and was still fresh and open.  She thought she might make Mr. Kendal and Sophy equally magnanimous.  Perhaps by that time Sophy would be too happy to have leisure to be hurt, and she had little fear but that Mr. Kendal’s good sense would conquer his jealousy for his son, though it might cost him something.

Two lovers to befriend at once!  Two desirable attachments to foster!  There was glory!  Not that Albinia fulfilled her mission to a great extent; shamefacedness always restrained her, and she had not Emily’s gift for making opportunities.  Indeed, when she did her best, so perversely bashful were the parties, that the wrong pairs resorted together, the two who could talk being driven into conversation by the silence of the others.

Of Mr. Hope’s sentiments there could be no doubt.  He was fairly carried off his feet by the absorption of the passion, which was doubly engrossing because all ladies had hitherto appeared to him as beings with whom conversation was an impossible duty; but after all he had heard of Miss Durant, he might as a judicious man select her for an excellent parsoness, and as a young man fall vehemently in love.  Nothing could be more evident to the lookers-on, but Albinia could not satisfy herself whether Genevieve had any suspicion.

She was not very young, knew something of the world, and was acute and observing; but on the other hand, she had made it a principle never to admit the thought of courtship, and she might not be sufficiently acquainted with the habits of the individual to be sensible of the symptomatic alteration.

She had begged the Dusautoys to make her leisure profitable, and spent much of her time upon the schools, on her little patient in Tibb’s Alley, and in going about among the poor; she visited her old shopkeeper friends, and drank tea with them much oftener than gratified Mr. Kendal, talking so openly of the pleasure of seeing them again, that Albinia sometimes thought the blood of the O’Mores was a little chafed.

‘There,’ said Genevieve, completing a housewife, filled with needles ready threaded, ’I wonder whether the omnibus is too protestant to leave a parcel at the convent?’

‘I don’t think its scruples of conscience would withstand sixpence,’ said Albinia.

‘You might post it for less than that,’ said Sophy.

‘Don’t you know,’ said Ulick O’More, who was playing with the little Awk in the window, ’that the feminine mind loves expedients?  It would be less commonplace to confide the parcel to the conductor, than merely let him receive it as guard of the mail bag and servant of the public.’

‘Exactly,’ laughed Genevieve.  ’Think of the moral influence of being selected as bearer of a token of tenderness to my aunt on her fete, instead of being treated as a mere machine, devoid of human sympathies.’