‘No, no, Aunt; indeed, it is not that. I am quite content to seem of no account beside Lina. I love her far too dearly to envy her superiority. But—if—when—I am married I should like it to be very quietly—no people looking on—no fuss—no fine gowns. When my father and Edgar have made up their minds that the proper time has come, I should like just to walk into my uncle’s church early some morning, with papa and Lina, and for Edgar to meet us there, just as quietly as if we were poor people, and for no one to be told anything about it.’ ‘What a romantic schoolgirlish notion!’ said Mrs. Ferrers contemptuously. ‘Such a marriage would be a discredit to your family; and I should think it most unlikely my brother would ever give his consent to such a hole-and-corner way of doing things.’ The one person at South Hill who absolutely refused to smile upon Daphne’s engagement was Madoline’s faithful Mowser. That devoted female received the announcement with shrugs and ominous shakings of a head which carried itself as if it were the living temple of wisdom, and in a manner incomplete without that helmet of Minerva which obviously of right belonged to it. ‘You don’t seem as pleased as the rest of us at the notion of this second marriage,’ said good-tempered Mrs. Spicer, housekeeper and cook, to whom ‘the family’ was the central point of the universe; sun, moon, and stars, earth and ocean, and the residue of mankind, being merely so much furniture created to make ‘the family’ comfortable. ‘I hear and see and say nothing,’ answered Mowser, as oracular in most of her utterances as Friar Bacon’s brazen head. ‘Time will show.’ ‘Well, all I can say is,’ said Jinman, ‘that our Miss Daphne is an uncommon pretty girl, and deserves a good husband. She has just that spice of devilry in her which I like in a woman. Your even-tempered girls are too insipid for my taste.’ ‘I suppose you would have admired the spice of devilry in Miss Daphne’s mar,’ retorted Mowser venomously, ‘which made her run away from her husband.’ ‘No, Mrs. Mowser; I draw the line at that. A man may want to get rid of his wife, but he don’t like her to take the initial’—Mr. Jinman meant initiative—‘and bolt. A spice of devilry is all very well, but one doesn’t want the entire animal. I like a shake of the grater in my negus, but I don’t desire the whole nutmeg. But I do think that it’s a low-minded thing to cast up Miss Daphne’s mar whenever the young lady’s talked about. Every tub must stand on its own bottom.’ ‘Well, Mr. Jinman,’ said Mowser, ‘all I hope is, that Miss Daphne will carry through her engagement now she’s made it. She’s welcome to her own sweetheart, as far as I am concerned, so long as she doesn’t hanker after other people’s.’