The unmistakable astonishment in the girl’s eye satisfied the duchess even before her voice.

“But he scarcely knows me or anything of me!” said the young girl quickly.

“On the contrary, my dear, he knows everything about you.  I have been particular in telling him all I know—­and some things even you don’t know and couldn’t tell him.  For instance, that you are a very nice person.  Come, my dear, don’t look so stupefied, or I shall really think there’s something in it that I don’t know.  It’s not a laughing nor a crying matter yet—­at present it’s only luncheon again with a civil man who has three daughters and a place in the county.  Don’t make the mistake, however, of refusing him before he offers—­whatever you do afterwards.”

“But”—­stammered Helen.

“But—­you are going to say that you don’t love him and have never thought of him as a husband,” interrupted the duchess; “I read it in your face,—­and it’s a very proper thing to say.”

“It is so unexpected,” urged Helen.

“Everything is unexpected from a man in these matters,” said the duchess.  “We women are the only ones that are prepared.”

“But,” persisted Helen, “if I don’t want to marry at all?”

“I should say, then, that it is a sign that you ought; if you were eager, my dear, I should certainly dissuade you.”  She paused, and then drawing Helen closer to her, said, with a certain masculine tenderness, “As long as I live, dear, you know that you have a home here.  But I am an old woman living on the smallest of settlements.  Death is as inevitable to me as marriage should be to you.”

Nevertheless, they did not renew the conversation, and later received the greetings of their host at Moreland Hall with a simplicity and frankness that were, however, perfectly natural and unaffected in both women.  Sir James,—­a tall, well-preserved man of middle age, with the unmistakable bearing of long years of recognized and unchallenged position,—­however, exhibited on this occasion that slight consciousness of weakness and susceptibility to ridicule which is apt to indicate the invasion of the tender passion in the heart of the average Briton.  His duty as host towards the elder woman of superior rank, however, covered his embarrassment, and for a moment left Helen quite undisturbed to gaze again upon the treasures of the long drawing-room of Moreland Hall with which she was already familiar.  There were the half-dozen old masters, whose respectability had been as recognized through centuries as their owner’s ancestors; there were the ancestors themselves,—­wigged, ruffled, and white-handed, by Vandyke, Lely, Romney, and Gainsborough; there were the uniform, expressionless ancestresses in stiff brocade or short-waisted, clinging draperies, but all possessing that brilliant coloring which the gray skies outside lacked, and which seemed to have departed from the dresses of their descendants.