She knew this fact about Fanny's mind, she believed, some time before Jane Knocker knew it; but she also had reason to think that Jane Knocker had known it for some time before she spoke of it. It was not till the middle of June, after a succession of encounters between the young people, that her old friend came one morning to discuss the circumstance. Mrs. Knocker asked her if she suspected it, and she promptly replied that it had never occurred to her. She added that she was extremely sorry and that it had probably in the first instance been the fault of that injudicious dinner. "Ah, the day of my headache--my miserable headache?" said her visitor. "Yes, very likely that did it. He's so dreadfully good-looking." "Poor child, he can't help that. Neither can I!" Lady Greyswood ventured to add. "He comes by it honestly. He seems very nice." "He's nice enough, but he hasn't a farthing, you know, and his expectations are _nil._" They considered, they turned the matter about, they wondered what they had better do. In the first place there was no room for doubt; of course Mrs. Knocker hadn't sounded the girl, but a mother, a true mother was never reduced to that. If Fanny was in every relation of life so painfully, so constitutionally awkward, the still depths of her shyness, of her dissimulation even, in such a predicament as this, might easily be imagined. She would give no sign that she could possibly smother, she would say nothing and do nothing, watching herself, poor child, with trepidation; but she would suffer, and some day when the question of her future should really come up--it might after all in the form of some good proposal--they would find themselves beating against a closed door. That was what they had to think of; that was why Mrs. Knocker had come over. Her old friend cross-examined her with a troubled face, but she was very impressive with her reasons, her intuitions. "I'll send him away in a moment, if you'd like that," Lady Greyswood said at last. "I'll try and get him to go abroad." Her visitor made no direct reply to this, and no reply at all for some moments. "What does he expect to do--what does he want to do?" she asked. "Oh, poor boy, he's looking--he's trying to decide. He asks nothing of anyone. If he would only knock at a few doors! But he's too proud." "Do you call him _very_ clever?" Fanny's mother demanded. "Yes, decidedly--and good and kind and true. But he has been unlucky." "Of course he can't bear her!" said Mrs. Knocker with a little dry laugh. Lady Greyswood stared; then she broke out: "Do you mean you'd be willing?----" "He's very charming." "Ah, but you must have great ideas." "He's very well connected," said Mrs. Knocker, snapping the tight elastic on her umbrella. "Oh, my dear Jane--'connected'!" Lady Greyswood gave a sigh of the sweetest irony. "He's connected with you, to begin with."