But Mrs. Staple, visited by her daughter some two hours later, listened to her warning with unshaken placidity, merely saying: “Dear me, did you get me to send my maid away only to tell me this, Fanny?”

“Mama, she ogled him throughout dinner! And the way in which he took her hand, and smiled at her—! I assure you—”

“I observed the whole, my love, and was most forcibly put in mind of the way he has with his puppies.”

“Puppies?” exclaimed Lady Lichfield. “Letty is not a puppy, Mama! Indeed, I think her an arrant flirt, and I cannot but be uneasy. You will own that she would not do for my brother!”

“Do not put yourself in a taking, my love!” replied Mrs. Staple, tying the strings of her nightcap under her chin. “I only hope she may amuse him enough to keep him here over the weekend, though I don’t scruple to say that I very much doubt it. My dear Fanny, was there ever such an insipid affair?”

“Oh, there was never anything like it!” readily agreed her daughter. “But, Mama, how shocking a thing it would be if John were to fall in love with Letty Yatton!”

“I have no apprehension of it,” replied Mrs. Staple calmly.

“He seemed to be quite taken with her,” said Fanny. “I cannot but wonder, ma’am, if Letty’s vivacity may not make dear Elizabeth’s gentler manners seem to him—well, tame!”

“You are making a piece of work about nothing,” said Mrs. Staple. “If he should feel a partiality for Elizabeth I shall be excessively happy. But I hope I am not such a goose as to set my heart upon the match. Depend upon it, your brother is very well capable of choosing a wife for himself.”