She was quite aware that as to fortune there could hardly be a worse match than Miss Vivian; but she was sensible enough to see that her son had a sufficiency, and generous enough to like the idea of redeeming the old estate.  Her husband had spent his latter years in a vain search for a faultless property, and his wealth was waiting for Lorimer’s settling down.  She had always regretted the having no vassals rightfully her own, and had felt the disadvantages of being Lady Bountiful only by tenant right.  To save an old estate from entirely passing out of a family, and relieve ‘a noble old wreck,’ like Sir Harry, seemed to her so grand a prospect that she could not but cast a little glamour over the manner of the shipwreck.  Still, to do her justice, her primary consideration was the blessing such a woman as Lenore might be to her son.

She had not fathomed Lady Tyrrell.  No woman could do so without knowing her antecedents, but she understood enough to perceive that Eleonora was not happy with her, and this she attributed to the girl’s deep nature and religious aspirations.  Rockpier was an ecclesiastical paradise to Lady Susan, and a close bond with Lenore, to whom in London she had given all the facilities that lay in her power for persevering in the observances that were alien to the gay household at home.  She valued this constancy exceedingly, and enthusiastically dilated on the young lady’s goodness, and indifference to the sensation she had created.  “Lorimer allows he never saw her equal for grace and dignity.”

Allows!  Fancy Frank allowing any perfection in his Lenore!  Was it not possible that a little passing encomium on unusual beauty was being promoted and magnified by the mother into a serious attachment?  But Lady Tyrrell was playing into her hands, and Lenore’s ecclesiastical proclivities were throwing her into the arms of the family!

It hardly seemed fair to feign sympathy, yet any adverse hint would be treason, and Mrs. Poynsett only asked innocently whether her friend had seen her son Frank.

“Oh yes, often; the handsomest of all your sons, is he not?”

“Perhaps he is now.”

“My girls rave about his beautiful brown eyes, just as you used to do, Julia, five-and-thirty years ago.”

Mrs. Poynsett was sure that whatever she had thought of Miles Charnock’s eyes five-and-thirty years ago, she had never raved about them to Susan Lorimer, but she only said, “All my boys are like their father except Charlie.”

“But Master Frank has no eyes for any one but Miss Vivian.  Oh yes, I see the little jealousies; I am sorry for him; but you see it would be a shocking bad thing for a younger son like him; whereas Lory could afford it, and it would be the making of him.”

Mrs. Poynsett held her peace, and was not sorry that her visitor was called away while she was still deliberating whether to give a hint of the state of the case.