“There is no occasion for thinking what I should do when I am alone, thank heaven,” said Mrs. Rowland; “there is little likelihood of that.” “We must be prepared for everything,” he said with a beaming face, which showed how little the possibility weighed upon him. “However, perhaps it is just as well. Now, my dear, I will tell you what I am going to do. I am going up to the North to see after it all. You shall stay comfortably here and see the pictures and that sort of thing, and I shall run up and prepare everything for you, settle about Rosmore on the longest term I can get, look after the furniture a bit: well--I should like, you know, to look after the children a bit, too.” “To be sure you would,” she said cheerfully. “You know I wanted you to have them here to meet us; but I understand very well, my dear James, that you would rather have your first day with them alone.” “It’s not that,” he said rising and marching about the room--“it’s not that. I’d rather see you with them, and taking to them than anything else in the world--but--perhaps I’d better go first and see how the land lies. You don’t mind my leaving you--for a few days.” He said this with a sort of timid air which sat strangely on the otherwise self-confident and consciously fortunate man, so evidently inviting an expression of regret, that Evelyn could scarcely restrain a smile. “I do mind very much,” she said: and he was so genial, so kind, even so amusing in his simplicity, that it was strictly true. “I don’t like at all to be left alone in London; but still I understand it perfectly, and approve--though I’d rather you stayed with me.” “Oh, if you approve,” he said with a sort of shame-faced laugh of satisfaction, “that is all I want; and you may be sure I’ll not stay a moment longer than I can help. I never saw such a woman for understanding as you are. You know what a man means before he says a word.”