The coalition between Ronald and Mrs. Thorpe was regarded with extreme disfavour by the uncle. “Making a milksop of the lad,” he called it sneeringly. But the villagers, one and all of them, were emphatic in their praise. “A nice couple they’d make,” said old widow Denvers. “I only hope it may come off, and that I may be alive to see it. And love each other they do already, unless my old eyes deceive me. See how he follers her about and well nigh wusshups the ground she treads on. Why he’d be at Thorpe Hill all day, if only that old aunt of his didn’t watch him like a cat. Drat her!” A feeling of companionship had steadily grown up between them. The almost daily meetings and constant interchange of ideas had produced their natural result, and the companionship that had at first been a pleasure had long become a necessity. Yet, strange to say, neither had recognised the fact. Ronald himself would have scouted the idea. Possessed of not a penny in his own rights, and dependent only on what his uncle allowed him, he would have ridiculed the notion of asking the richest woman in the county to become his wife. Indeed it was the deterrent influence of their relative positions that had excluded the possibility from finding a place among the contingencies of his life. Yet she it was, however unwittingly, who was the cause of Ronald’s last escapade. The idea had frequently occurred to him that she had inspired his uncle with the nearest approximation to love of which his nature was capable. Not according to the accepted traditions of lovemaking, nor exhibited in a manner that would be patent to the world at large. But he showed her attentions that he withheld from all other women. He would enquire solicitously after her health, and the health of her dogs, in huge Grandisonian phrases; above all, he would vacate for her his favourite armchair, and waive her into it with a bow of old-world politeness. (To his sister, who ruled his household, the chair in question was rigorously debarred). Then again, she was a Liberal in politics. Not that this counted for much, because he maintained that women should be allowed no politics at all, beyond presenting a feeble reflex of the man who was nearest or dearest to them. Much as he hated Conservatism, he would sooner have seen the wife of his friend Jacobs pose as the rankest of Tories, than at variance with her husband in a way so subversive of the relation of the sexes. “What a blessing it is to get across here for a change of air,” said Ronald, flinging himself down on a chair in Mrs. Thorpe’s drawing-room, where she was arranging her flowers for the day. “Well, what’s the matter now? Is it the aunt or the uncle who has ruffled you this morning?”