Presently there came a cold Saturday in March, a wet, windy day, when to saunter by the brook would have too odd an air. But would it have an odd look, Josina wondered, standing before the glass in her room, if she ran across to the Cottage for ten minutes about sunset? The bank closed early on Saturdays, and men were not subject to the weather as women were. Twice she put on her bonnet, and twice she took it off and put it back in its box—she could not make up her mind. He might think that she followed him. He might think her bold. Or suppose that when they met before others, she blushed; or that they thought the meeting strange? And, after all, he might not be there—he was no favorite with Mrs. Bourdillon, and his heart might fail him. In the end the bonnet was put away, but it is to be feared that that evening Jos was a little snappish with Miss Peacock when arraigned for some act of forgetfulness. Had she gone she might have come off no better than Clement, who, braving all things, did go. Mrs. Bourdillon did not, indeed, say when he entered, “What, here again?” but her manner spoke for her, and Arthur, who had arrived before his time, received the visitor with less than his usual good humor. Clement’s explanation, that he had left his gun, fell flat, and so chilly were the two that he stayed but twenty minutes, then faltered an excuse, and went off with his tail between his legs. He did not guess that he had intruded on a family difference, a trouble of some standing, which the passage of weeks had but aggravated. It turned on Ovington’s offer, which Arthur, pluming himself on his success and proud of his prospects, had lost no time in conveying to his mother. He had supposed that she would see the thing with his eyes, and be as highly delighted. To become a partner so early, to share at his age in the rising fortunes of the house! Surely she would believe in him now, if she had never believed in him before. But Mrs. Bourdillon had been imbued by her husband with one fixed idea—that whatever happened she must never touch her capital; that under no circumstances must she spend it, or transfer it or alienate it. That way lay ruin. No sooner, therefore, had Arthur come to that part of his story than she had taken fright; and nothing that he had been able to say, no assurance that he had been able to give, no gilded future that he had been able to paint, had sufficed to move the good woman from her position. “Of course,” she said, looking at him piteously, for she hated to oppose him, “I’m not saying that it does not sound nice, dear.” “It is nice! Very nice!”