perhaps most of any, threw off--just blew off like cigarette-puffs--such
sketches of. The betrothed of Mr. Mudge at all events accepted the
explanation, which had the effect, as almost any turn of their talk was
now apt to have, of bringing her round to the terrific question of that
gentleman. She was tormented with the desire to get out of Mrs. Jordan,
on this subject, what she was sure was at the back of Mrs. Jordan's head;
and to get it out of her, queerly enough, if only to vent a certain
irritation at it. She knew that what her friend would already have
risked if she hadn't been timid and tortuous was: "Give him up--yes, give
him up: you'll see that with your sure chances you'll be able to do much
better."

Our young woman had a sense that if that view could only be put before
her with a particular sniff for poor Mr. Mudge she should hate it as much
as she morally ought. She was conscious of not, as yet, hating it quite
so much as that. But she saw that Mrs. Jordan was conscious of something
too, and that there was a degree of confidence she was waiting little by
little to arrive at. The day came when the girl caught a glimpse of what
was still wanting to make her friend feel strong; which was nothing less
than the prospect of being able to announce the climax of sundry private
dreams. The associate of the aristocracy had personal
calculations--matter for brooding and dreaming, even for peeping out not
quite hopelessly from behind the window-curtains of lonely lodgings. If
she did the flowers for the bachelors, in short, didn't she expect that
to have consequences very different from such an outlook at Cocker's as
she had pronounced wholly desperate? There seemed in very truth
something auspicious in the mixture of bachelors and flowers, though,
when looked hard in the eye, Mrs. Jordan was not quite prepared to say
she had expected a positive proposal from Lord Rye to pop out of it. Our
young woman arrived at last, none the less, at a definite vision of what