‘Oh, I see! Certainly not, if they have any sense,’ was the most decided answer; ‘they may be angry, you know, if the wife their brother chooses is disliked by them; but if they have no ground for disliking her, they would be selfish and foolish, simply, to be jealous when their brothers married.’ ‘You say John Leyburn is your cousin and your friend and your brother all in one. Suppose he took it into his head to get married—he must be lonely in that great house of his by the river.’ ‘If John were to marry,’ repeated Nita, slowly and pensively. Her hands were fully occupied; for at this moment they were driving down a steep hill, and the roans were fresh. She could not have hidden her face, had she wished to do so. As her eyes met Jerome’s, a quick flush rose on her cheek—a flush which grew deeper. ‘If she cares for him, there can be no danger in my asking questions; she is in no danger with me,’ thought Wellfield, with characteristic indolence, and also with a characteristic wish to find out whether she ‘cared’ irrevocably for John Leyburn. And he said: ‘If John were to marry—yes. What is to hinder him? Would his wife consider him your brother? Would she see it in the same light, do you think?’ ‘She would be a very nasty girl if she did not,’ said Nita, with a heightened colour and flashing eyes, ‘when I should do all in my power to be kind to her.’ ‘Oh, you would do all in your power to accomplish that? Then you would not mind if John got married?’ ‘I should mind it very much if his wife were such an odious woman as you seem to think she would be. Stepping in and destroying——’ ‘The friendship of a lifetime; breaking every social tie, and so on. Let us put it in another light. Suppose he married, and married some one of so generous a disposition as to wish him not to lose his sister——’ ‘I should not call that generous, but merely decent and reasonable.’ ‘Well, he marries this decent, reasonable woman, and then you marry. Do you think your husband would look upon John in the light of a brother?’ ‘Mr. Wellfield, what strange questions you ask!’ ‘Not at all. You would have to consider the subject when you married.’ ‘But I am not going to be married. I know papa thinks I shall have to, but I don’t intend it at all.’