"My dear Adèle, you are a child. These people know your character and mine, and are pretty well acquainted with all our affairs, without our taking the trouble of informing them. I wonder who leaves Arthur's letters about sometimes."
"Arthur's letters?" Adèle shrugged her shoulders almost imperceptibly. "All the world is at liberty to see them."
"There it is again, my dear; we return to the subject we were discussing a few minutes ago. When do you intend to make a lover of your cousin? You know you cannot possibly remain in this brother-and-sisterly stage. You must give him one or two lessons or he'll slip through your fingers yet."
Adèle was accustomed to her mother's style of conversation, so it did not particularly shock her; she only smiled rather strangely: "Arthur wants no lessons from me, mamma."
"Ah! then you are further advanced than I thought; but really, Adèle, you have been brought up so simply I wonder sometimes if you know at all what it means to have a lover. I was very different with my first lover, a cousin too, though we didn't marry after all. A very good thing; he was poor and idle: I should have been a wretched woman. Now, Arthur is well off, and not at all extravagant; no strong tastes either; just the kind of man whom a woman can mould to her will; but then she must know how, and I fear, Adèle, you are a sad baby in these matters."
"It's not for want of instruction, mamma," said Adèle rather maliciously.
But the good-natured Mrs. Churchill scarcely saw the point of her daughter's satire. "You are right," she said. "I have done my very best to instill into your mind some knowledge of the world you live in, Adèle. I considered it a duty," she sighed faintly. "Had your poor father been alive, the case might have been different. Women who are thrown on their own resources, like you and me, my child, must be equal to the task of taking care of themselves."
It was a task in which, apparently, Mrs. Churchill had never failed: she did not certainly look the worse for care and anxiety. She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes—a habit, simply, for not the faintest moisture was there to remove, but to mention the departed Mr. Churchill without paying this tribute of regard to his dear memory would have been most unseemly. A pause for this trivial operation then Mrs. Churchill continued: "I have wished for some time to speak to you about this matter, Adèle. I have managed for you so far; I can do so no further."
The last words seemed to astonish the young girl. She looked up: "You have managed, mamma? What can you mean?"
"Why, little goose! to whom do you think you owe your lover? Not to Arthur, certainly. He would have gone on droning about the house for ever, without the slightest consideration for your feelings or mine, engrossing you and shutting out others. I brought him to book and showed him his duty." (The fond mother showed her white teeth at the remembrance.) "When they were all laying themselves out to entrap him, too! Lady Lacy and her pretty nieces, Mrs. Campbell and her ugly daughters; even gaunt Mr. Godolphin, with that extensive motherless child of his. Ha! ha! it was too good!"