If you ask me whether I expected to have my offer accepted, I will frankly say "no". I think Phyllida must enjoy surprises, for she accepted the invitation at once, though perhaps a little ungraciously and with a suggestion that, within limits, any one was welcome to her... Will was at home; and, though I have never been able to decide what I should think if he told me that he was going to marry his cousin, I was certainly beginning to feel that it was time for him to find a suitable wife and settle down. Will is nearly thirty, and I have always considered that a popular and good-looking bachelor is _unfairly_ exposed to temptation in England. _They_ will let well alone if only others would leave _them_ alone... As witness that girl at Morecambe. I shall not tell you about that, because I hope--nay more; I _pray_--that it is all satisfactorily settled; and, also, I was never told the full story. It was enough for me that he had lost a splendid appointment and now, once more, has _nothing_ to live on; he must marry or find a job... When the girl's father came to the house--one of these rugged, north-of-England clergymen who always have the air of intimidating you into a state of grace--, it was my husband whom he insisted on seeing. I had never known Arthur in a state of such ungovernable fury. Bursting into my room, he stamped up and down, incoherent, beside himself... To this day I do not know what Will is supposed to have done. The girl kissed him good-night or something. I suppose I am the last person to condone any _freedom_, but she was a mere child ten years younger than my boy--what more natural or innocent? The old father spied on them... Hence the storm. Reading between the lines, I should conjecture that the girl deliberately laid herself out to catch Will. The one time I saw this Molly Phenton, she seemed an attractive child, with deep-set, rather appealing eyes; a good deal of soft brown hair, too, and pretty hands. Quiet, simply dressed; a perfect specimen of "the old country clergyman's pretty little daughter." And that, _I have no doubt_, was the effect she wanted to achieve with Will, the appeal of innocence and youth to a palate grown weary of more sophisticated charms; I wonder _more_ men are not caught in that way... Will, I am thankful to say, pulled back before the trap could close on him; I was really astounded that the father had the effrontery to come all the way from Morecambe on what was nothing less or more than a blackmailing expedition. Futile, if nothing else; Will is not one of those men who find it necessary to buy popularity by giving presents to all and sundry; and I am sure he is too prudent to write a girl foolish letters... "Arthur, do stop walking about," I said, "and tell me what has happened." Too often, _only_ too often, when Will has been in trouble of any kind, I have been excluded on the pretext that this was not a woman's province. His own mother!