“Indeed, I should not be sorry to think so,” said Mrs. Eastwood, not without severity in her tone. But the severity was lost upon Innocent. She understood, as she did always by some strange magic understand Frederick, that she was now to withdraw from him and do her best to appear indifferent. It was a Sunday afternoon, rainy and miserable--and a rainy Sunday afternoon, when English domestic virtue shuts up all its ordinary occupations, is, it must be allowed, a dreary moment. I do not at all agree in the ordinary conventional notion of the dreariness of English Sundays generally, but I allow that a Sunday afternoon, when all the good people are at home, when the children are forbidden to play, and the women’s work is carefully put away, as if innocent embroidery were sin, and the men do not know what to do with themselves, is trying. If you are musical to the extent of Handel you may be happy, but the only thing to be done otherwise in a good orthodox respectable family, bound by all the excellent English traditions, is to pick a quarrel with some one. About five o’clock or so, with the rain pouring steadily down into the garden, the flower-beds becoming puddles before your eyes, the trees looking in upon you like pitiful ghosts--if you have not dared the elements and gone to afternoon church, you must quarrel or you must die. Mrs. Eastwood felt the necessity. She called Frederick close to her, and she addressed him in an undertone. Innocent had gone away, and placed herself in a chair close by the window. She had not even “taken a book”--the impossibility of making her ever “take a book” was one of the miseries of the house. She was gazing blankly out upon the rain, upon the trees that shivered and seemed to ask for shelter, and the beds, where a draggled line of closed-up crocuses were leaning their bosoms upon the mud. Her beautiful profile was outlined distinctly against the pale gray dreary light. It _was_ a beautiful profile always, more beautiful than the full face, which wanted life. Blank as the day itself was her countenance, with that motiveless gaze which was, indeed, almost mystic in its absolute want of animation. Her hands were crossed upon her lap, her whole limp girlish figure seemed to sympathize with the dreariness outside. Mrs. Eastwood looked with a mixture of pity, sympathy, and disapproval at this apathetic, immovable being, so self-absorbed, and yet so childish and pitiful in her self-absorption. She drew Frederick to her and laid her hand upon his arm. “Frederick, look there,” she said in a low tone, “if you were not in the room Innocent would rush off up-stairs. She stays only for you. I saw you just now with her as I came in. For God’s sake, take care what you are about. You are turning that child’s head.” “Bah! nonsense,” said Frederick, freeing himself with a complacent smile. “It is not nonsense. I have watched her since ever she came. She has neither eyes nor ears but for you.”