Lady Greyswood got up: she stood looking in silence at the tinted shade of the lamp. She remained in this position so long that he glanced at her--he was struck with the sadness in her face. He would have been in error however if he had suspected that this sadness was assumed for the purpose of showing him that she was wounded by his resistance, for the reflection that his last words caused her to make was as disinterested as it was melancholy. Here was an excellent, a charming girl--a girl, she was sure, with a rare capacity for devotion--whose future was reduced to nothing by the mere accident, in her face, of a certain want of drawing. A man could settle her fate with a laugh, could give her away with a snap of his fingers. She seemed to see Maurice administer to poor Fanny's image the little displeased shove with which he would have disposed of an ill-seasoned dish. Moreover he greatly exaggerated. Her heart grew heavy with a sense of the hardness of the lot of women, and when she looked again at her son there were tears in her eyes that startled him. "Poor girl--poor girl!" she simply sighed, in a tone that was to reverberate in his mind and to constitute in doing so a real appeal to his imagination. After a moment she added: "We'll talk no more about her--no, no!" All the same she went three days later to see Mrs. Knocker and say to her: "My dear creature, I think it's all right." "Do you mean he'll take us up?" "He'll come and see you, and you must give him plenty of chances." What Lady Greyswood would have liked to be able to say, crudely and comfortably, was: "He'll try to manage it--he promises to do what he can." What she did say, however, was: "He's greatly prepossessed in the dear child's favour." "Then I dare say he'll be very nice." "If I didn't think he'd behave like a gentleman I wouldn't raise a finger. The more he sees of her the more he'll be sure to like her." "Of course with poor Fanny that's the only thing one can build on," said Mrs. Knocker. "There's so much to get over." Lady Greyswood hesitated a moment. "Maurice _has_ got over it. But I should tell you that at first he doesn't want it known." "Doesn't want what known?" "Why, the footing on which he comes. You see it's just the least bit experimental." "For what do you take me?" asked Mrs. Knocker. "The child shall never dream that anything has passed between us. No more of course shall her father." "It's too delightful of you to leave it that way," Lady Greyswood replied. "We must surround her happiness with every safeguard." Mrs. Knocker sat pensive for some moments. "So that if nothing comes of it there's no harm done? That idea--that nothing may come of it--makes one a little nervous," she added. "Of course I can't absolutely answer for my poor boy!" said Lady Greyswood, with just the faintest ring of impatience. "But he's much affected by what he knows--I told him. That's what moves him." "He must of course be perfectly free."