“Oh!” said Mrs. Harwood, with somewhat blank looks, “in a year or so!” “Yes, mamma; did you expect him to jump to the heights of his profession in a moment? A silk gown in six months and the woolsack perhaps in----” Gussy broke off with a laugh. She had replied to her mother with a look equally blank, incapable of understanding (as it seemed) what could be looked for more. “I am not so silly as that,” said the mother. “I know it is very slow work getting on at the Bar. Still, I thought----” “What did you think?” asked Gussy, with a certain scorn in the corners of her mouth. “My dear, if you take that tone I shall say nothing more. I had thought nothing that was not quite reasonable, whatever you may think; but I shall say no more about it. You young people have your own ways of managing matters. I don’t think much of them, but that, I suppose, is because I am old-fashioned and can’t understand anything so superfine as your modes of action. You are a great deal too superior for me.” “I notice,” said Gussy, “that whenever people are arguing, and don’t know what to say, they call those who think differently superfine and superior. It is as good an argument as another, I suppose.” Thus Gussy punished her mother for putting into words the troubled intuition of her own heart. It was enough, however, to put a stop to the discussion, which was what she desired most. Mrs. Harwood was so much moved that, wanting an outlet somewhere, she was driven to confiding in Janet, who came down to the drawing-room earlier than usual. Gussy had gone out somewhere to tea. “I don’t seem to understand the simplest questions nowadays,” she said, fretfully; “they all think me so old-fashioned that I am not worth considering. Do you think it an honorable thing, Janet, or right, or wise for a man to flutter for years about a girl, always coming after her, never letting her alone, so that everybody has remarked it, and yet never saying a word that could compromise him, though he has quite compromised her? Do you think there is any sense in which that could be called right?” “No,” said Janet, in a very low tone, smitten by sudden compunction. She had her back to Mrs. Harwood, pouring out the tea. “What do you say? Oh, I suppose you are just like the rest, and don’t see any harm in it. But I assure you I do. If anyone haunted you like that, my dear, under my roof, I should certainly think it my duty to interfere.” “Oh, I hope not, Mrs Harwood; isn’t that surely the very worst thing that can be done--to interfere----” “Interfere!” said Mrs. Harwood, indignantly; “I should soon interfere. I should not let anything like that go on, I promise you. The worst is,” she went on, with a troubled countenance, “that with one’s own----”