Clara and her mother, both of them, rushed into the conversation with the same breath as women rush to separate combatants. I should have been very much surprised had I been more deeply interested. But at present I was occupied with that imperturbable, uninterfering quietness with which Alice sat at the table, saying nothing;--how elaborately unconscious and unconcerned she looked!--that was much more important to me than any squabble between Maurice and the Rector’s sister--or than the Rector himself, or any one of the many and various individual concerns which, like the different threads of a web, were woven into the quiet household circle--giving a deep dramatic interest to the well-bred, unpicturesque pose of the little company in that quiet English room. CHAPTER XVII. We stayed all that night at Waterflag, as we always did when we dined with the Sedgwicks, and of course I was subjected to a long private and confidential conversation with Mrs. Harley in my dressing-room, when we both ought to have been at rest. She poured out her anxieties upon me as she had done many a long year ago, when all these young people were unconscious little children, and Dr. Harley, poor good man, was newly dead. Only Time had changed both of us since then--she had become an old woman with silver-white hair under her snowy cap. I was old too, though my boy was but a child, and kept me nearer to youth than belonged to my years; but Mrs. Harley was as glad of this outlet to her anxieties, and felt as much relief in pouring these anxieties forth upon somebody else’s shoulders as ever. “Ah, Clare!” she said, “you have only one, to be sure, and he’s nobly provided for; but we’re never so happy, though we don’t think it, as when they’re all children. There’s nothing but measles and such things to frighten one _then_--but _now_!--dear, dear! the charge of all these grown up young people, Clare, is far too much for a poor woman like me. I believe I shall break down all at once, one of these days.” “Let us take it quietly,” said I, “they are very good, sensible, well-educated young people--they know what they are doing--don’t you think you might trust them to act for themselves?” “They will, whether I trust them or not,” sighed poor Mrs. Harley. “Ah dear! to think how one toils and denies one’s self for one’s family, and how little account they make of one’s wishes when all is done! I think mine have quite set themselves--all but Clara, dear girl, who is so perfectly satisfactory in every way--to thwart and cross me, Alice--you know how unreasonable she is--I can do nothing with her. Just the thing of all others that I could have chosen for her, and such a nice, excellent, judicious young man. You saw how she behaved to him to-night.” “But really, Mrs. Harley, if Alice doesn’t like him”--I interposed with humility.