“What we must do, Dombeen,” she had said to me one day not long after her decision to go to London to Mrs. Lovell, “is to get you settled.” “What on earth do you mean?” I had asked. “A wife,” she said, laughing. “You mustn’t be left all alone.” “I like being alone,” I said: “that is, when you’re not here.” “But you ought to marry,” Rose said. “Every one says so.” “Who says so?” “Well, Mrs. Cumnor says so.” “I don’t pay any attention to the wives of the clergy,” I replied. “Aunt Milly says so.” “Oh, Aunt Milly! Of course. She has never wished me anything but ill.” “I should feel much happier in London if I thought you were not alone,” Rose said. “That’s absurd,” I replied. “You were not unhappy at school, and I was alone then.” But now Rose went on to select actual wives! I used to wonder what she really thought about it all, but never discovered. It was not like her to be so persistent with a theme. She usually touched and passed on. Could it be that we were out of harmony in graver matters, and she jested to keep free of them? She would come back to lunch, after being in the village, with new and fantastic plans for my marriage. Every spinster and widow within a five mile radius was weighed as a possible Mrs. Greville. Rose dismissed Mrs. O’Gorman as too old, but her faithful Julia came under the lens. “But no,” she was kind enough to say, “I couldn’t let you marry her. A woman must have some spirit.” Three unmarried sisters—the Misses Sturgis—had recently taken the Allinsons’ old house—after one or two fleeting and unattractive tenants. Rose saw a good deal of them just now, and I was on more or less familiar terms both as a doctor and a neighbour. The sisters, who were refined and affluent, had been brought up as Quakers, but they quaked no more nor did they harbour any resentment against our “steeple-house”; they had become indeed useful members of the congregation, receiving from the rector the preferential treatment meted out to this particular sect even when it retains its nonconformity. Rose was never tired of analysing each—Miss Sturgis, Miss Hester and Miss Honor—as a possible wife for me. “I was looking at Hester Sturgis again this morning,” she said. “Really she’s very nice. She has very pretty hair, don’t you think? She is writing an essay on Walter Pater for the next meeting of the Lowcester Literary Society. She particularly hoped that you wouldn’t be there, Dombeen. She says you’re so critical, she’d be terrified.” I gave Rose the assurance that I should not be there. “I wonder if wives ought to be afraid of their husbands,” the minx went on. “I mean, of their intellects?” I made no sign of comprehension.