Florence’s speculations concerning Aunt Anne were brought to an end by the arrival of Mr. Fisher. She was surprised at his paying her so early a visit, and for a moment feared lest it should mean bad news from Walter. But his benevolent expression reassured her. “I hope you will forgive my intruding on you at this hour, Mrs. Hibbert,” he said. “My visit is almost a business one, if I may venture to call it so, and I hope its result may be pleasant to us both.” His manner was a faint echo of Aunt Anne’s. “I would have written to ask you to see me, but the idea that brings me only occurred to me an hour or two ago.” “But of course I would see you,” she answered brightly. “And I think the morning is a delicious time of day to which we devote far too much idleness.” “I thoroughly agree with you,” he said, and looked at her approvingly, for he was quite alive to the duties of domesticity. In his short married life it had been an everlasting irritation to him that his wife was a slattern and wholly indifferent about her home. It had made him keen to observe the ways of other women; though the sight of a well-kept house always depressed him a little, for it set him thinking of the denials in his own life, of what he might have had and could have been; it made him also a little extra deferential and gracious to the woman who presided over it. He was so to Florence this morning. He had noticed quickly that all signs of breakfast had vanished, he divined that the children were out of doors, and that she herself, with her slate and account-books, was deep in household matters. It was thus he thought that a woman should chiefly concern herself. Her husband, children, and home were her business in life. The rest could be left to the discretion and management of men. He felt that it was almost a duty on his part, in the absence of her husband, to discreetly manage Florence. Moreover, in the intervals of editing his paper, he had a turn for editing the lives of other people, and he felt it almost an obligation to give a good deal of time to the consideration of the private affairs of his staff. He liked the Hibberts too, and was really anxious to be good and useful to them. He had come to the conclusion that it was a pity that Florence and her children should stay in London while Walter was away. “She would be much better in the country,” he thought; “the children could run about; besides, what is the good of keeping that cottage near Witley empty?” and then he remembered his own mother, who was seventy years old and lived far off in the wilds of Northumberland. Her sole amusement appeared to be writing her son letters, lamenting that he never went to stay with her, and that since he lived in small and inconvenient bachelor chambers, she could not go and stay with him. It had been her desire that he should marry again. She had told him that it was foolish not to do so, that she could die happy if he had a wife to take care of him.