‘If there is no war, and if Kenrick comes home.’ ‘We will hope there will be no war. I shall be so proud and happy when I see you established at Culverhouse Castle. It was my idea, you know, long ago, before you or Kenrick dreamed of such a thing. Clement would never have thought of it; but I saw from the very first that you and Kenrick were made for each other.’ Mrs. Dulcimer could not refrain from these little gushes of self-gratulation. This engagement of Sir Kenrick and the heiress was the first grand success that had come out of all her match-making. She had brought a good many couples together, occasionally for better, and often for worse; but she had never before made such a match as this. She felt as if the whole thing were her sole doing. She felt herself the saviour of the Culverhouse family. When the mortgages came to be paid, it would be her work. Beatrix answered not a word. She was always grave and silent when the absent Kenrick was talked about. Her heart could not respond to Mrs. Dulcimer’s raptures. She liked Kenrick, and believed him noble and disinterested; but between such liking and glad unreasoning love there is a wide gulf. ‘Yes, my dear,’ pursued Mrs. Dulcimer, ‘if you are obstinately bent on living at the Water House, you must have a person of middle age for your companion.’ ‘Then I should like a Frenchwoman who could not understand one word of English,’ said Beatrix. She had her reason for this strange desire. She remembered how Miss Scales’s heart, or that piece of mechanism which does duty for a heart in the Scales tribe, had been set against her by the slanderous gossip of Little Yafford. Her new companion must be some one who could not talk or be talked to. The knowledge of foreign tongues at Little Yafford was happily at a minimum. Beatrix knew of no one except Bella Scratchell who could have spoken half a dozen sentences in decent French. ‘You would like to improve yourself in the language,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer. She always called French ‘the language.’ ‘Well, dear, we must put an advertisement in the _Times_; but I’m afraid it will be difficult to get the superior kind of person to whom we could entrust you. Of course we must state that unexceptionable references will be required.’ The advertisement appeared, and brought a shower of letters upon Mrs. Dulcimer, giving occasion to much consultation between her and Beatrix, but among them all there was only one letter that gave Beatrix an agreeable idea of the writer. This came from a lady who had only just come to England, a childless widow, whose husband, a provincial journalist, had lately died, and left her in reduced circumstances, and who had come to London to try to make some use of her literary talents, only to find that literary talents were a drug in the market. Beatrix liked the letter. The lady’s references were satisfactory; so, after a little time lost in negotiation, Madame Leonard was engaged, and in due course appeared at the Water House.