“No,” said Mrs. Eastwood, “I won’t keep you at arm’s length, for that would be to punish Nelly; but I think you should not have spoken till your prospects were a little more clear.” “They are clear enough,” said the anxious lover. “It is only that I have been idle, and wanted energy; but now no man can have a stronger motive----” Mrs. Eastwood shook her head again, but she smiled likewise, and gave him her hand, and even permitted a filial salute, which reddened her comely cheek, and softened her heart to Nelly’s betrothed. Perhaps, under the circumstances, it was permissible for a man to be imprudent. Molyneux spent the rest of the day in and about The Elms, appearing and disappearing, hanging about Nelly, disturbing all the household arrangements, and communicating to the visitors premature information as to what had happened. Not that he made any confidences, but that his mere presence there all the afternoon, his look of possession and triumph, the little air of being at home, which the young man could not resist taking upon himself, told the tale more clearly than words. Mrs. Barclay ran in “just for a moment,” as she said, to beg Nelly to go with her next day to a horticultural show, and “finish what you have begun, you little puss,” she whispered in the girl’s ear. “What have I begun?” Nelly asked, bewildered, while Molyneux, without any assignable reason, was so rude as to burst out laughing in his enjoyment of the joke. He put Mrs. Barclay into her carriage as if he had been the son of the house, she said afterwards, a proceeding which sent her away with a certain vague disquiet and resentment, though of course, as she allowed, she had no right to interfere. Major Railton, too, when he called about the plumber’s work, was infinitely disgusted to find Molyneux there, and to leave him there, when, after long waiting, he was obliged to relinquish the hope of out-staying his rival. “I must go,” he said at length, in tart and ill-tempered tones, “for alas! I am not so lucky as you young fellows with nothing to do. I have my duties to attend to.” This was a poisoned arrow, and struck the whole happy group, mother, daughter, and lover, with equal force. “I am sure, Major Railton, you are an example to us all,” said Mrs. Eastwood; “always so ready to serve others, and yet with so much of your own work to do. But I hope Mr. Molyneux has his duties too.”