"And that first one, dear Miss Jupp: could you not have married him?"
"No, my dear. Truth to tell, he never asked me. He dared not ask me; it would have been quite unsuitable. Believe me, many an unmarried woman could give you the same history nearly word for word. Hence you see how necessary it is to guard against an intimacy with unsuitable acquaintances."
"And you put Mr. Hunter into the catalogue?" returned Miss Thornycroft, affecting to speak lightly.
"Most emphatically--as considered in relation to you," was Miss Jupp's answer. "Your family will expect you to marry well, and you owe it to them to do so. Mr. Hunter is in every respect unsuitable. Until recently he was only a clerk; he has his own way to carve yet in the world; he is much older than you; and--he has been already married."
"Of course I know all that," said Miss Thornycroft, with the deepest colour that had yet come over her. "But don't you think, ma'am, it would have been quite time to remind me of this when circumstances called for it?"
"Perhaps not. At any rate, my dear, the warning can do you no harm. If unrequired in regard to Mr. Hunter--as indeed I believe it to be--it may serve you in the future."
Miss Jupp said no more. "I have put it strong," she thought to herself, as the young lady curtsied and left the room. "It was well to do so."
"Engineers rise to honours, as he said, and I know he is going on for them," quoth Mary Anne Thornycroft, with characteristic obstinacy, slowly walking along the passage. "I should never care for anyone else in the world. As to money, I daresay I shall have plenty of that; so will he when he has become famous."
They travelled to Coastdown together--Isaac Thornycroft and his sister, Mrs. Copp and Anna Chester, as we must continue to call her--by a pleasant coincidence, as it was deemed by Miss Thornycroft. Mrs. Copp, living upon thorns--but that is a very faint figure of speech to express that timid lady's state of mind was ready some days before, but had to await the arrival of Anna. Isaac kept her out longer than the week, getting back just in time to take charge of his sister.
As they sat in the carriage together, what a momentous secret it was that three of them held, and had to conceal from the fourth! If Anna's eyes were bright with happiness, her cheeks looked pale with apprehension; and Mrs. Copp might well shiver, and lay it upon the frost. Not so Isaac. Easy, careless, gay, was he--"every inch a bridegroom." After all, there was not so very much for him to dread. It was expedient to keep his marriage secret, if it could be kept so; if' not, why he must face the explosion at home as he best could: the precautions he had taken would ward off reproach from his wife.