“I really cannot undertake to say whether she is like that person you once knew,” said I, somewhat demurely. I had some hopes that she was--I was much inclined to imagine that it was a youthful prepossession, of which, perhaps, she herself was unaware, that kept Alice Harley an unmarried woman; but of course I was not going to say so even to Derwent, who, with all his good qualities, was after all only a man. An unmarried woman!--that I should call my pretty Alice by that harsh, mature, common-place name! But I am sorry to say the appellation was quite a just one. She was nearer eight and twenty than eighteen, now-a-days; she had no love, no engagement, no sentimental gossip at all to be made about her. I will not undertake to say that she had not some ideas of another kind, with which I had but a very limited sympathy--but an unmarried woman Alice Harley was, and called herself--with (I thought) a little quiet secret interest, which she deeply resented any suspicion of, in Indian military affairs. “Because,” said Derwent, with the old affectionate laugh, and glance of old love-triumph over his old wife, which he never outgrew or exhausted, “there is that very good fellow, our new Rector, would give his ears for such a wife--and from all I can see, would suit her famously; which, by the way, Clare, now that her mother is so dependent on her, is not what every man would. You should say a good word for Reredos--it is your duty to look after your protégée’s establishment in life.” I confess when Derwent said these words a great temptation came to me. It suddenly flashed upon my mind that Alice in the Rectory would be my nearest neighbor, and the most pleasant of possible companions. At the same moment, and in the light of that momentary selfish illumination, it also became suddenly visible to me that my dear girl had a great many notions which I rather disapproved of, and was rapidly confirming herself in that _rôle_ of unmarried woman, which, having once rather taken to it myself, I knew the temptations of. Mr. Reredos was only about five years older than herself, good-looking, well-connected, with a tolerably good living, and a little fortune of his own. And how could I tell whether my private designs would ever come to anything? Derwent, simple-minded man, had not fallen on so potent an argument for many a day before. “Mamma,” said little Derwent, who heard everything without listening, “the housekeeper at the Rectory has a son in the Guards--like the men in the steel-coats that you showed me when we went to London; the other sons are all comfortable, she says; but this one, when she speaks of _him_, she puts up her apron to her eyes. Mamma, I want to know if it is wicked to go for a soldier--Sally Yeoman’s son ’listed last year, and _she_ puts up her apron to her eyes. Now, my cousin Bertie is in India--was it wicked in him to go for a soldier?--or what’s the good of people being sad when people ’list?--eh, mamma?”