When the Twins were out of the hearing of their mother and Sir James, the Terror said:
“Well, he was quite decent about it. It made him much more uncomfortable than we were. I suppose it was because we’re more used to Mum.”
“What did the silly idiot want to give us away at all for?” said the unappeased Erebus.
“Oh, well; he didn’t mean to. It was an accident, you know,” said the Terror.
His provident mind foresaw advantages to be attained from a closer intimacy with Sir James.
“Accident! People shouldn’t have accidents like that!” said Erebus in a tone of bitter scorn.
When he and Mrs. Dangerfield came out of the park, Sir James diplomatically fell to lauding the Twins to the skies, their beauty, their grace and their intelligence. The diplomacy was not natural (he was no diplomat) but accidental: the Twins were the only subject he could at the moment think of. He could not have found a quicker way to Mrs. Dangerfield’s approval. She had been disposed to dislike him for having been blackmailed by them; his praise of them softened her heart. Discussing them, they came right to the gate of Colet House; and it was only natural that she should invite him to tea. He accepted with alacrity. At tea he changed the subject: they talked about her.
He came home yet more interested in her, resolved yet more firmly to see more of her. With a natural simplicity he used his skill in woodcraft to compass his end, and availed himself of the covert afforded by the common to watch Colet House. Thanks to this simple device he was able to meet or overtake Mrs. Dangerfield, somewhere in the first half-mile of her afternoon walk.
They grew intimate quickly, thanks chiefly to his simple directness; and he found that his first impression that he wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything in his life, more even than he had wanted, in his enthusiastic youth, to shoot a black rhinoceros, was right. He had been making arrangements for another shooting expedition; but he perceived now very clearly, indeed, that it was his immediate duty to settle down in life, provide the Hall with a mistress, and do his duty by his estate and his neighbors.
He had had no experience of women; but his hunting had developed his instinct and he perceived that he must proceed very warily indeed, that to bring Mrs. Dangerfield over the boundary-line of friendship into the land of romance was the most difficult enterprise he had ever dreamed of. But he had a stout heart, the hunter’s pertinacity, and a burning resolve to succeed.