"What a pleasure it must be to you, my dear lady," he said when the young couple had gone: which took place very soon, for Phil soon grew tired of the presents, and he was ill at ease when there was no window from which he could watch the road--"what a pleasure to see them so much attached! Of course, family advantage and position is always of importance--but when you get devoted affection, too----" "I hope there is devoted affection," said Mrs. Dennistoun; "at all events, there is what we are all united in calling 'love,' for the present. He is in love with Elinor--I don't think there can be much doubt of that." "I did not of course know that he was here," said the Rector, with some hesitation. "I came with the intention of speaking--I am very sorry to see in the papers to-day something about that Joint-Stock Company of which Mr. Compton was a director. It's rather a mysterious paragraph: but it's something about the manager having absconded, and that some of the directors are said to be involved." "Do you mean my future son-in-law?" she said, turning quickly upon him. "Good heavens, no! I wouldn't for the world insinuate---- It was only that one felt a desire to know. Just upon the eve of a marriage it's--it's alarming to hear of a business the bridegroom is involved in being--what you may call broken up." "That was one of the things Mr. Compton came to tell us about," said Mrs. Dennistoun. "He said he hoped it might be kept out of the papers, but that some of the books have got lost or destroyed. I am afraid I know very little about business. But he has lost very little--nothing to speak of--which was all that concerned me." "To be sure," said the Rector, but in a tone not so assured as his words. "It is not perhaps quite a nice thing to be director of a company that--that collapses in this way. I fear some poor people will lose their money. I fear there will be things in the papers." "On what ground?" she said. "Oh, I don't deny there may be some one to blame; but Mr. Compton was, I suspect, only on the board for the sake of his name. He is not a business man. He did it, as so many do, for the sake of a pretence of being in something. And then, I believe, the directors got a little by it; they had a few hundreds a year."