“You will understand me so much the better. (Colonel Kingsward knew perfectly well all about Mrs. Leigh’s two daughters). I do not believe that you would have given one of them to a man--to whom another lady put forth a prior claim.” “I am not at all sure of that. I should have ascertained first what kind of person put forth the claim----” “We need not go into these details,” said Colonel Kingsward, waving his hand. “It is most important to go into these details. I can give you every particular about this lady, Colonel Kingsward; and so can a dozen people, at least, who have no interest in the matter except to tell the truth.” “The question is closed in my mind, Mrs. Leigh. I have no intention of opening it again.” “And this is the sole ground upon which my son is rejected?” she said, fixing her keen eyes upon his face. “It is the sole ground; it is quite enough, I believe. Supposing even that the lady was everything you allege, an intimacy between a woman of that character and your son is quite enough to make him unsuitable for my daughter.” “Who is not of your opinion, however,” Mrs. Leigh said. Colonel Kingsward was confused by this speech. He got up and stood before the fire. He avoided meeting her eye. “My daughter is very young and very inexperienced,” he said. “She is at present more moved by her feelings than her reason. I believe that with an increase of maturer judgment she will fully adopt my view.” Colonel Kingsward believed that he had altogether crushed his visitor, but he was not so right as he thought. Mrs. Leigh went back to her son with triumph in her eyes. “He knows nothing more,” she said. “He does not know that she has turned against you. Whatever is her reason, it is something different from his, and she has not confided it to him. I thought as much when you told me of the letters stopped. A man does not intercept a girl’s letters when he knows she has come round to his way of thinking. Now you have got to find out what she has heard, and to set her right about it whatever it may be.” CHAPTER X. TO set oneself to find out without any clue or guidance what it is which has affected the thoughts of a girl for or against her lover--without any knowledge of her surroundings, or from what quarter an adverse influence, an ill report, could have come--who could have spoken to her on the subject of Aubrey, or what kind of story to his disadvantage (for this was what Mrs. Leigh convinced herself must have happened) she had heard--to discover everything and counteract it, was a mission that might well have frightened anyone who undertook it. And I don’t doubt that Mrs. Leigh, to encourage her son, spoke a great deal more confidently than she felt, and that she really intended to give herself up to this discovery, and to take no rest until she had made it, and cleared up the matter which threatened to separate these two young people for ever, and make havoc in both their lives.