‘I have no fears about the boys to embitter my grief. I know they will be well cared for. He was so good a father, though he had them so little with him. Oh, why did you not tell me to send him one of the boys?’ Mr. Beresford would have felt himself the cruellest of malignants, had he ventured to make such a suggestion in former days, but he did not say this now. ‘You did what you thought was best for them,’ he said. ‘Ah, yes,’ she said eagerly, ‘for them; there was their education to be thought of. That was what I considered; but I do not think--do you think,’ she added, with an unconscious clasping of her hands and entreating look, ‘that, since the great occasion for it is over--Edward need go to India now?’ The form of the speech was that of an assertion--the tone that of a question. She might follow her own inclinations like other people; but she liked to have them sanctioned and approved by her friends. ‘Surely not, if you don’t wish it. There is only your wish to be considered.’ ‘It is not myself I am thinking of. It is for him,’ she said, faltering. Of all things that could happen to her, she was least willing to allow that her own will or wish had any share in her decisions. It was a weakness which perhaps the more enlightened of her friends were already aware of. As for Mr. Beresford, he was more critical of her than ever he had been before, although more entirely sympathetic, more ready to throw himself into her service. She looked at him so anxiously. She wanted his opinion and the support of his concurrence. There was nothing for him to do, to be of use as he proposed, but to agree with her, to support what she had thought of--that was friendship indeed.