"_Odd?_" repeats Burgoyne slowly, reflecting in how extremely commonplace a light both the virtues and vices of his fellow-traveller have always presented themselves to him; "it would never have occurred to me that Willy was _odd_; I cannot"--smiling--"encourage you in the idea that you have added one to the number of the world's eccentrics." She sighs rather impatiently at his apparently intentional misunderstanding of her drift. "'Children are avenues to misfortune,' as somebody said, and I think that, whoever he was, he was right. 'If Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as are those in the land, what good shall my life do to me?'" "Why should you credit Jacob with any such intention?" "I do not half like leaving him here by himself." "_By himself?_ You count me as no one then?" "Oh yes, I do--I count you as a great deal; that is why I was so anxious to speak to you before I went; of course I do not expect you to take upon yourself the whole responsibility of him, but you might keep an eye upon him." He shrugs his shoulders. "As I have to keep the other eye upon myself, I am afraid that the effort would but make me squint." "It is his own generosity that I am afraid of--his self-sacrificing impulses; I am always in terror of his marrying someone out of pure good-nature, just to oblige her, just because she looked as if she wished it." "Stevenson thinks that it does not much matter whom we marry, whether 'noisy scullions,' or 'acidulous vestals.'" "I do not care what Stevenson thinks: ever since Willy was in Eton jackets, I have had a nightmare of his bringing me home as daughter-in-law some poor little governess with her nose through her veil, and her fingers through her gloves!" Burgoyne smiles involuntarily as a vision of Elizabeth's daintily-clad hands flashes before his mental eye. "I think you overrate his magnanimity; I never saw him at all tender to anyone whose gloves were not beyond suspicion." Mrs. Byng laughs constrainedly. "Well, if she has not holes in her gloves, she may have holes in her reputation, which is worse." Jim draws in his breath hard. The tug of war is coming, as the preceding leading remark, lugged in by the head and shoulders, sufficiently evidences. At all events he will do nothing to make its approach easier or quicker. He awaits it in silence. "These Le Marchants--as they are friends of yours--I suppose that I ought not to say anything against them?" "I am sure that you are too well-bred to do anything of the kind," replies he precipitately, with a determined effort to stop her mouth with a compliment, which she is equally determined not to deserve. "I do not think I am; I am only well-bred now and then, when it suits me; I am not going to be well-bred to-night." "I am sorry to hear it." "Whether they are friends of yours or not, I do not like them." "I do not think that that matters much, either to you or to them." "I have an instinct that they are adventuresses."