“Does your father know that you have come to see me?” Lady Markham said. With Spears himself she had some standing-ground. She knew how to talk to the demagogue, understood him, and he her; but the young woman she did not understand. Paul’s mother, notwithstanding all her experience, was half afraid of this creature, so straightforward, so free of prejudice, so--sensible. Yes, it was sense, no doubt. Janet did not want to go away. She had no faith in her father, nor in the man who was going, she hoped, to be her husband. Lady Markham, herself capable of enthusiasm and devotion, and who could so well, in her maturity, have understood the folly of a girl ready to follow to the end of the world for love, was almost afraid of Janet. She was cowed by her steady look, the bargain she evidently wished to make. She took refuge as it were, in Spears, mentally appealing to him in her heart. “No,” said Janet, “no one knows. He is away from home on one of his speechifyings. Don’t think I hold with that, my lady. England’s good enough for me, and things as they are; and if so be as you will make up your mind not to go against us, Mr. Paul shall never go to foreign parts through me. But he is Sir Paul, ain’t he?” the young woman said. “I will do nothing--to make my son unhappy,” said Lady Markham. How could she help but sigh to think that this was the woman that could make him happy? “He is not at home,” she added with a tone of relief. “But he is Sir Paul? What is the good of deceiving me, when I can hear from any one--the gentleman down stairs, or any one.” “Is there a gentleman down stairs?” Lady Markham thought some one must have come bringing news, perhaps, while she was shut up here. Janet blushed crimson. Now she had indeed made a mistake. She avoided all reply which might have led to the discovery that Brown was the gentleman she meant; but this glaring error made her humbler. “You are very kind, my lady, to speak so reasonable,” she said. “And if you like to tell Mr. Paul that I’m as set against emigration as you are--I am not one that will be put upon,” said Janet; “but if we’re both to be the same, you and me, both Lady Markhams,” here she paused a moment to draw a long breath, half overcome by the thought which in this scene became so dazzlingly real and possible, “I think it would be a real good thing if we could be friends.”