From a less abstract point of view she desired the question to be settled in Effie’s interests, feeling sure both that Fred was an excellent _parti_, and that he was that highly desirable thing--a good young man. Perhaps a sense that to have the house to herself, without the perpetual presence of a grown-up stepdaughter, might be an advantage, had a certain weight with her; but a motive which had much greater weight, was the thought of the triumph of thus marrying Effie--who was not even her own, and for whom her exertions would be recognized as disinterested--in this brilliant manner at nineteen--a triumph greater than any which had been achieved by any mother in the county since the time when May Caerlaverock married an English duke. None of these, it will be perceived, were sordid reasons, and Mrs. Ogilvie had no need to be ashamed of any of them. The advantage of her husband’s daughter was foremost in her thoughts. But with all this in her, it may well be believed that Mrs. Ogilvie was very impatient of the young people’s delays, of the hours that Fred wasted in the Gilston drawing-room without ever coming to the point, and of the total want of any anxiety or desire that he should come to the point, on the part of Effie. “He will just let the moment pass,” this excellent woman said to herself as she sat and frowned, feeling that she gave them a hundred opportunities of which they took no heed, which they did not even seem to be conscious of. It was all she could do, she said afterwards, to keep her hands off them! the two silly things! just playing with their fate. She was moved almost beyond her power of self-control, and would sit quivering with the desire to hasten matters, ready every time she opened her lips to address them on the subject, while Fred took his tea with every appearance of calm, and Effie served him as if in a dream. “Oh ye two silly things!”--this was what was on her lips twenty times in an afternoon; and she would get up and go out of the room, partly lest she should betray herself, partly that he might have an opportunity. But it was not till about the end of October, on a dusky afternoon after a day of storm and rain, that Fred found his opportunity, not when Mrs. Ogilvie, but when Effie happened to be absent, for it was, after all, to the elder lady, not to the younger, that he at length found courage to speak. CHAPTER XII. “Mrs. Ogilvie, may I say a word to you?” he asked. “Dear me, Mr. Fred, a hundred if you like. I am just always most ready to listen to what my friends have to say.” Which was true enough but with limitations, and implied the possibility of finding an opening, a somewhat difficult process. She made a very brief pause, looking at him, and then continued, “It will be something of importance? I am sure I am flattered that you should make a confidant of me.”