Well then, there he is with the question of the marriage ended--as to which, let me catch myself up to remember, I shall have to give _her_ a motive, a presentable ground, since it's ended by her act, which won't make it too anomalous on his part that relations with the house are kept up. I must have him, by the way, not "stay" with them--I see advantages and naturalnesses, facilitations of several sorts, in his not doing that, but, much rather, putting up at one of the inns of the day, or better still in a lodging in one of the old Westend streets. Why not let the young woman make it quite frank and outspoken--happy thought!--and say in so many words that she can't marry him because, heaven help her, she's afraid of him; just that, simply afraid of him, even if he (with his own malaise at this note) can't get out of her any _why_, when he challenges her, as in dignity and decency he must, for a reason. This much affects and impresses him--for there isn't in it, mind, the smallest hint or implication of its being through any jealousy of her sister, whom she doesn't so much as honour with a suspicion. (The sort of Cinderella quality, so to call it, of the younger one, to be shown as more or less felt by him.) The position thus taken with practical suddenness by his prospective bride is the first definite note, at all really sharp one, that he has to reckon with on the subject of the queerness that hangs, that may so well hang, about him; and it sets up thereby the beginnings of the great feeling that I want to impute to him. He thinks all the same, at first, he expects and apprehends, not with pleasure, however, that this attitude of hers won't be supported by her mother and her brother: the thing having taken place between themselves only, and quite abruptly; she striking him as acting by her own sudden impulse alone, and in a manner not at all to suit the others. They will overbear her, he imagines; her mother in particular will bring her round again and into line. He positively fears this even--so that his surprise is great, and his malaise even greater, when the mother, with a full opportunity, by this time, doesn't so much as speak to him on the subject. There must be a passage between them, him and the Mother, in which he wonderingly and observantly, watching now all symptoms and portents, as it were, waits for Mrs. So-and-So to speak, to broach the matter herself, to show him her knowledge of what her daughter has done. He must know, or must believe, that she has now the knowledge--this point having been treated between him and the daughter, as it were, in the scene of the rupture. He _has_ of course to ask her if she throws him over with her mother's privity and approval, to which she replies that she doesn't, up to then, that she has broken down but then and there, but that now at once of course she will report herself, so to speak, to her mother. I see it must be the case that she is plain