When she had gone away and his mother had come out from the drawing-room and was about to take a turn round the garden, he lit a cigar and gave her his arm. He was talking rapidly, not of Miss Wadhurst, but of his approaching struggle with Mr. Dunning. His mother knew, from the persistency with which he rushed away from every chance she offered him of touching upon Miss Wadhurst, that he was anxious to an extraordinary degree to get her own opinion of their visitor. It was not until he had led her to her favourite seat in the curve of an Italian balustrade overlooking the stonework of a pond with a fountain in the centre that she said, “I don’t wonder that you are in love with her, Jack.” “Great Gloriana! I--in love--with--whom?” he cried. “She is, I think, the nicest girl I ever met,” continued his mother. “She has elegance, and that is the rarest quality among the girls of nowadays--the elegance of a picture by Sir Joshua; and her dress--there was not a single jarring note. I thought at first that that piece of Mechlin round her neck was rather overdone--it is worth sixty or seventy pounds--ah, now you perceive how outrageous is my taste--appraising the value of a visitor’s dress. Dreadful!” “Monstrous! But you think----” “I think that she is the only girl who could carry off such a thing without self-consciousness. She is a girl of the greatest taste.” He shook his head. “That’s bad news,” he said. “Bad news?” “Bad. If she has any taste what chance should I have?” His mother smiled. She knew girls a good deal better than did her son. She had come to think of her son as the one who chooses and the girl as the one who is chosen. She never thought of the girl as having any choice in the matter. It was her _metier_ to be chosen, and all the others stood by envying her. It was no wonder that she smiled at his suggestion. “I only wish--but it is too late now. After all, it is only people who have not seen her--who do not know her--that will sneer at her being only a farmer’s daughter,” she said.