“Mothers and brothers are tolerably close connections,” said Mrs Gaunt with dignity. “He has got his pay, General; and you always intended, if he married to your satisfaction---- Of course,” she added, speaking very quickly, to forestall an outburst, “Lady Markham will not leave her daughter dependent upon a captain’s pay. And even Mr Waring--Mr Waring must have a fortune of his own, or--or a person like that would never have married him; and he would not be able to live as he does, very comfortably, even luxuriously----” “Oh, I suppose he has enough to live on. But as for pinching himself in order to enable his girl to marry your boy, I don’t believe a word of it,” exclaimed the General. Fortunately, being carried away by this wave of criticism, he had forgotten his wife’s allusion to his own intentions in George’s favour; and this was a subject on which she had no desire to be premature. “Well, General,” she said, “perhaps we are going a little too fast. We don’t know yet whether anything will come of it. George is rather a lady’s man. It may be only a flirtation; it may end in nothing. We need not begin to count our chickens----” “Why, it was you!” cried the astonished General. “I never should have remarked anything about it, or wasted a moment’s thought on the subject!” Mrs Gaunt was not a clever woman, skilled in the art of leaving conversational responsibilities on the shoulders of her interlocutor; but if a woman is not inspired on behalf of her youngest boy, when is she to be inspired? She gave her shoulders the slightest possible shrug and left him to his newspaper. They had a newspaper from England every morning--the ‘Standard,’ whose reasonable Conservatism suited the old General. Except in military matters, such questions as the advance of Russia towards Afghanistan, or the defences of our own coasts, the General was not a bigot, and preferred his politics mild, with as little froth and foam as possible. His newspaper afforded him occupation for the entire morning, and he enjoyed it in very pleasant wise, seated under his veranda with a faint suspicion of lemon-blossom in the air which ruffled the young olive-trees all around, and the blue breadths of the sea stretching far away at his feet. The garden behind was fenced in with lemon and orange trees, the fruit in several stages, and just a little point of blossom here and there, not enough to load the air. Mrs Gaunt had preserved the wild flowers that were natural to the place, and accordingly had a scarlet field of anemones which wanted no cultivation, and innumerable clusters of the sweet white narcissus filling her little enclosure. These cost no trouble, and left Toni, the man-of-all-work, at leisure for the more profitable culture of the olives. From where the General sat, there was nothing visible, however, but the terraces descending in steps towards the distant glimpse of the road, and the light-blue margin, edged with spray, of the sea--under a soft and