“Stranger! fiddlesticks. Don’t I know your cousin, Lord Cheriton; and has not your father done business for me? Besides, I like young men, when they’re modest and pleasant, as you are. Indeed I sometimes like them when they’re impertinent. I like young faces and young voices about me. I like to be amused, and to see people happy. I can’t endure the idea of your lying for ever so many days and nights in this dog-kennel, when you came to Medlow to enjoy yourself.” “It mustn’t be many days and nights. I must get home somehow by the end of the week, if I post all the way.” “Oh, you needn’t post. When you are able to be moved, my carriage shall take you to the station; and I’ll get the railroad people to take an invalid carriage through to Dorchester for you.” “Indeed, you must not be impatient, Harry,” said Juliet. “I shall come to see you every day, except on the hunting days, and even then I can walk over in the evening, if Lady B. will let me.” “Of course I shall let you. All my sympathies are with lovers, and when you are married I shall give Mr. Dalbrook as much of my business as I possibly can venture to take away from those dear old fossils at Salisbury, who have been the family lawyers for the best part of a century.” Juliet had confided her engagement to Lady B. at the beginning of her visit, and she and Lady B. had talked over the young man’s chances of doing well in the world, and the wisdom or the foolishness of such an alliance. Lady B. had seen a good deal of smart young men and women, and she had discovered that the smart young men were very keen in the furtherance of their own interests, and that the smart young women had considerable difficulty in getting themselves permanently established in the smart world by smart marriages. Some were beautiful, and many were admired; but they had to wait for eligible suitors, and one false step in the early stages of their career would sometimes blight their chances of success. Juliet had taken many false steps, and had got herself a good deal talked about, and Lady Burdenshaw felt that her chance of making an advantageous match had been lessening year by year until it had come to be almost nil. “If this young fellow is sensible and good-looking, and has a little money, I really think, Ju, you ought to marry him,” concluded Lady B., talking the matter over with her _protégée_ before she had seen Harrington. She fancied that Juliet had cooled somewhat in her feelings towards her youthful lover within the last week or ten days. It might be, Lady B. thought, that she began to perceive that he was too young, that the difference in their ages, which was not much, and the difference in their worldly experience, which was enormous, unfitted them to be happy together.