Lady Blandish honestly loved the boy. She would tell him: “If I had been a girl, I would have had you for my husband.” And he with the frankness of his years would reply: “And how do you know I would have had you?” causing her to laugh and call him a silly boy, for had he not heard her say she would have had him? Terrible words, he knew not then the meaning of! “You don’t read your father’s Book,” she said. Her own copy was bound in purple velvet, gilt-edged, as decorative ladies like to have holier books, and she carried it about with her, and quoted it, and (Adrian remarked to Mrs. Doria) hunted a noble quarry, and deliberately aimed at him therewith, which Mrs. Doria chose to believe, and regretted her brother would not be on his guard. “See here,” said Lady Blandish, pressing an almondy finger-nail to one of the Aphorisms, which instanced how age and adversity must clay-enclose us ere we can effectually resist the magnetism of any human creature in our path. “Can you understand it, child?” Richard informed her that when she read he could. “Well, then, my squire,” she touched his cheek and ran her fingers through his hair, “learn as quick as you can not to be all hither and yon with a hundred different attractions, as I was before I met a wise man to guide me.” “Is my father very wise?” Richard asked. “I think so,” the lady emphasized her individual judgment. “Do you—” Richard broke forth, and was stopped by a beating of his heart. “Do I—what?” she calmly queried. “I was going to say, do you—I mean, I love him so much.” Lady Blandish smiled and slightly coloured. They frequently approached this theme, and always retreated from it; always with the same beating of heart to Richard, accompanied by the sense of a growing mystery, which, however, did not as yet generally disturb him.