When this man was ushered in by Brownlow with an importance befitting the occasion, Mrs. Eastwood momentarily felt her courage fail her. She knew him but slightly, and had never come into much personal contact with him, and she had that natural respect, just touched by a little dread for him, which women often entertain for men of public eminence who have gained for themselves a prominent place in the world. Nor did he do anything to diminish her agitation. He looked at her with cool grey eyes which twinkled from the folds and layers of eyelids that surrounded them, and with a half sarcastic smile on his face; and he called her “ma’am,” as he was in the habit of doing when he meant to bully a female witness. Mrs. Eastwood, striving vaguely against the feeling, felt as if she too was going to be cross-examined and to commit herself, which was not a comfortable frame of mind. “So our children, ma’am, have been making fools of themselves,” he said, with a twinkle of his eyes, after the preliminary observations about her health and the weather were over. He followed the words with a chuckle at the folly of the idea; and Mrs. Eastwood, who was anxiously determined to fill the part of “mère noble,” was taken aback, and scarcely knew what to reply. “They have taken a step,” she said, breathless, “which must very seriously affect their happiness----” “Just so,” said Mr. Molyneux, “and you and I must see what can be done about it. Ernest is not a bad fellow, ma’am, but he is sadly imprudent. He plunges into a step like this, without ever thinking what is to come of it. I suppose he has told you what his circumstances are?” Mrs. Eastwood replied by a somewhat stiff inclination of her head. “Precisely like him,” said his father, chuckling. “Not a penny to bless himself with, nor the least idea where to find one; and accordingly he goes and proposes to a pretty girl, and makes up his mind, I suppose, to set up housekeeping directly--Heaven help him!--upon nothing a year.” “This is not what he has said to me,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “In the first place, though frankly avowing that he had nothing--beyond his allowance from you--I have understood from him that by greater diligence in the pursuit of his profession----” Mrs. Eastwood was interrupted here, by a low “Ho, ho!” of laughter from her visitor--a very uncomfortable kind of interruption. To tell the truth, feeling that things were against her, and determined not to let down Nelly’s dignity, she had taken refuge in a grandeur of expression which she herself was conscious might be beyond the subject. No woman likes to be laughed at; and Mrs. Eastwood grew twenty times more dignified as she became aware of the levity with which the other parent treated the whole affair.