"You don't speak. It is not a bad thing pecuniarily. They would make it about three hundred a year, I think, and I should get very good introductions, and it would be like beginning life again for both of us. I thought it would be a good chance of shaking off any old associations; and as the position would be tolerable, it would be only me--myself, I mean--that you would have to put up with, and---- You don't speak still! I haven't offended you?" She looked up at him. Her face was very pale, and her hands fluttered nervously before her; but there was no break in her voice as she said: "Offended me! You have done me the greatest honour in your power, and you talk about offence! You must not ask me for an answer now; I cannot give it; the whole thing has been so sudden. I will think it over, and write to you in a day or two at most. Meantime, I think it would be advisable for both our sakes that you should not speak of what has occurred, even to your sister." "Of course not," he said; "anything you wish. And you tell me that I may hope?" "I did not quite say that," she said with a smile. "I told you you must wait for my reply. You shall have it very soon. Now, goodbye." She held out her hand to him, and he took it in his own--which again looked horribly red and common, she thought--then he just touched it with his lips, and he was gone. "Another element, a third element in the confusion," said Daisy to herself as she reascended the stairs to her room; "but one not so difficult to deal with as the others." CHAPTER XX. FARTHER SOUNDINGS. It was not likely that a man of George Wainwright's intelligence and habits of observation could remain long domesticated in a household like that of the Derinzys', without speedily reading the characteristics of its various members. In a very little time after his arrival, the young man--whose manners were so quiet and sedate as to lead Captain Derinzy to hint to his wife that he thought Wainwright rather a muff--had reckoned up his host and knew exactly the amount of vanity, silliness, and ignorance which so largely swayed the estimable gentleman; had gauged Mrs. Derinzy's scheming worldliness, knew why it originated and at what it aimed; had thoroughly solved the problem, so difficult to all others, of Mrs. Stothard's position in the house; and knew exactly the character of the malady under which Annette was suffering.