The Rector leaned over Maggie’s neck, and took the Captain by the button-hole, and fondly inditing of so good a matter, he delivered a discourse which was too learned and confidential to be reported rashly. And Stephen hearkened so well and wisely, that Mr. Hales formed a better opinion than he ever before had held of him, and began to doubt whether it might not be a sensible plan in such times as these, to close the ranks of the sober thinkers and knit together all well-affected, stanch, and loyal interests, by an alliance between the two chief houses of the neighbourhood--the one of long lineage, and the other of broad lands; and this would be all the more needful now, if Hilary was to make a mere love-match. But in spite of all wisdom, Mr. Hales was full of strong warm feelings: and loving his niece as he did, and despising in his true heart Stephen Chapman, and having small faith in converted rakes, he resolved to be neutral for the present; and so rode home to his dinner. CHAPTER XLIII. IN AMONG THE BIG-WIGS. If any man has any people who ought to care about him, and is not sure how far they exert their minds in his direction, to bring the matter to the mark, let him keep deep silence when he is known to be in danger. The test, as human nature goes, is perhaps a trifle hazardous, at any rate when tried against that existence of the wiry order which is called the masculine; but against the softer and better portion of the human race--the kinder half--whose beauty is the absence of stern reason, this bitter test (if strongly urged) is sure to fetch out something; at least, of course, if no suspicion arises of a touchstone. Wherefore now there were three persons, all of the better sex, in much discomfort about Hilary. Of these, the first was his excellent grandmother, Lady Valeria Lorraine, whose mind (though fortified with Plowden, and even the strong Fortescue) was much amiss about his being dead, and perhaps “incremated,” leaving for evidence not even circumstantial ashes. Proof of this, however invalid, would have caused her great distress--for she really loved and was proud of the youth; but the absence of proof, and the probability of its perpetual absence (for to prove a man dead is to prove a negative, according to recent philosophers), as well as the prospect of complications after the simplest solution, kept this admirable lady’s ever active mind in more activity than was good for it.