"No, I haven't met him, Mrs. Ladd."
"He seems just to have made his appearance, but I think he's rather assiduous." She laughed again. "And two years is just about the dangerous time, isn't it?"
Thus Mrs. Ladd, hinting to Cyril Maxon, in all friendship, that he was not the only man in the world and had better not forget the fact. Friend as she was, she knew enough of her man to feel a certain pleasure in administering the wholesome warning.
It needed more to drive Cyril Maxon from his confident appropriation of Lady Rosaline, but that something more was not long in coming. He, too, met Sir Axel at her flat—once or twice in the hours which he had grown into the habit of considering as reserved for himself; he tried very hard to show neither surprise nor annoyance, but he felt an immediate grievance. Here was he, the busiest of men, painfully contriving a spare hour; was he to spend it in three-cornered trivial talk? Thrapston had all the long idle day to call. Lady Rosaline really might give him a hint! But it appeared not to strike her that she might. And she seemed to like Sir Axel's company—as, indeed, most people would. He was a simple country gentleman, no fool at all at his own business, but without much pretension to intellectual or artistic culture. This, however, he could recognize and respect; he recognized and respected it in Lady Rosaline, was anxious to learn from her, and deferred to her authority. "When people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others which a sensible person would always wish to avoid." Jane Austen perhaps allows herself a little malice in this remark, but we cannot deny that she speaks with authority on human nature.
On one occasion, when he did find his friend alone, Maxon complained of the times when he had not.
"I've nothing against him, of course, but it's you I come to talk to. Why, I scandalize my clerk, and sometimes my clients, for the sake of coming!" He managed to keep voice and manner playful.
She was gracious, admitting the force of his plea. "It was stupid of me not to think! Of course Sir Axel can come at any time. I'll give him a hint to call earlier. Is that satisfactory, my lord?" She sometimes called him by that title—partly in anticipation of the judgeship, but also with a hint of raillery at the domineering nature.
"It's very kind—and don't you like it better like this yourself?"
"Perhaps I do. And clearly you do. And"—she smiled—"very likely Sir Axel does. We shall all three be pleased! Delightful!"
"I wasn't thinking of his point of view, I confess." He was rather too scornful.