“Than you?” said Claude. “If you ask my opinion, I don’t think so. I think he’s a lucky fellow. An old mother, I don’t deny, might be a bore. An old lady, half blind, never hearing what you say, sitting by the fire--like the mothers in books, or the Mrs Nickleby kind. But you are as young and handsome and bright as any of them--keeping everything right for him, asking nothing. Upon my word, I think he is very well off. I wish I were in his place.” Lady Markham was pleased. Affectionate flattery of this kind is always sweet to a woman. She laughed, and said he was a gay deceiver. “But, my dear boy, you will make me think a great deal more of myself than I have any right to think.” “You ought to think more of yourself. And so you really do not think that Con----? In many ways, dear Lady Markham, I feel that Con--understood me better than any one else--except you.” “I think you are right, Claude,” she said, with a grave face. “I am beginning to feel quite sure I am right. When she writes, does she never say anything about me?” “Of course, she always--asks for you.” “Is that all? Asking does not mean much.” “What more could she say? Of course she knows that she has lost her place in your affection by her own rashness.” “Not lost, Lady Markham. It is not so easy to do that.” “It is true. Perhaps I should have said, fears that she has forfeited--your respect.” “After all, she has done nothing wrong,” he said. “Nothing wrong; but rash, headstrong, foolish. Oh yes, she has been all that. It is in the Waring blood!” “I think you are a little hard upon her, Lady Markham. By the way, don’t you think yourself, that with two daughters to marry, and--and all that: it would be a good thing if Mr Waring--for you must have got over all your little tiffs long ago--don’t you think that it would be a good thing if he could be persuaded to--come back?” She had watched him with eyes that gleamed from below her dropped eyelids. She said now, as she had done to Sir Thomas, “I should put no difficulties in the way, you may be sure.” “It would be more respectable,” said Claude. “If getting old is good for anything, you know, it should make up quarrels; don’t you think so? It would be a great deal better in every way. And then Markham----” “Markham,” she said, “you think, would then be free?” “Well--then it wouldn’t matter particularly about Markham, what he did,” the young man said.