“It is strange of Clare to send you such a summons,” said Lady Augusta; “but I daresay she is very lonely, poor child. I do hope we shall see a great deal more of her at Thorne when we get home. To tell the truth, I am very glad you are going. I do not like to think of her, still in mourning as she is, and left in that house all alone.” “Yes; I have been a little forgetful of Clare, I fear,” Edgar said, without thought; and the girls, who were now very attentive, made another rapid comment within themselves all in a breath. He has been thinking so much of Gussy! How funny it was! How nice to be Gussy, for whose sake a man “forgot all about” his duties! A little thrill of interest ran through the assembled family; and even kind Lady Augusta, who had become, as she herself said, “quite attached” to Edgar, was a little moved by the thought of what might be coming. “You are never forgetful of anybody, I am sure,” she said, “unless with a very strong motive. I don’t like to praise people to their faces; but I never saw any one less apt to think of himself than you.” Edgar made no reply to this praise. There was a little pause of expectation, an occasional hush in the room, which one and another attempted to break by snatches of conversation, perpetually interrupted. They can’t expect me to make the plunge before them all, Edgar mused to himself, with a sense of fun which was very inappropriate to the gravity of the position. And after all, when he came to think of it, it would be very difficult to make this plunge. What could he say? Gussy and he had been upon the easiest, the friendliest terms. He did not see how he could alter that ground all at once, and assume a vein of high sentiment. There was in reality so little sentiment in his mind. He was not impassioned; and it occurred to him all at once that to ask a girl to marry him in this perfectly calm and humdrum way would not be flattering to the girl. Gussy, no doubt, would expect something very different. She would expect a lover’s fervour, the excitement of a man whose happiness for life depended on her Yea or Nay; and Edgar felt that his happiness did not depend upon it. Altogether, it was an embarrassing position. Conversation languished in the Thornleigh drawing-room, and the family gave furtive glances at him, and tried to look indifferent, and betrayed itself. As for Gussy, she never looked at him at all. She had given up her tea-making, though she still sat at the table, with the tray before her, which was a fortunate shield; but her eyes were bent upon her work, and she was as silent as a mouse in her corner, conscious to her finger-points, and expectant too.