name, while he must address her as Mrs. So-and-so, and in maintaining
this difference they would both become conscious of pleasing
restraint.

His comprehension of life was invariably a sentimental one, so the
aunts were to him merely middle-aged women--uninteresting, and useful
only so far as their efforts contributed to render the lives of young
people easy and pleasurable. In abrupt and passing impressions he
concluded that Aunt Mary was bright and pleasant, but tediously
voluble, given to wasting that time which he would have liked to spend
talking to the young ladies of poetry and Italy.

He scorned poor Aunt Hester. She shrank from him, frightened by his
harsh, blunt manners; she was afraid he led a sinful life in London.
Aunt Mary had few doubts on the subject, and her comments made her
sister tremble. She spoke of him as a most desirable husband for
Maggie. "He will be a peer, my dear James. Lord Mount Rorke will never
marry again. He is the acknowledged heir to the title and estates."

And the young man went as he came--full of himself, his clothes, his
good looks; bumptious and arrogant, effusive in his love of his
friends, and yet sincere. He looked out of the railway carriage window
to seize a last look of the green, with its horse pond and its downs,
and the cricketers all in white, running to and fro (young Meason had
just made a three, and Sally was applauding). The porches of
the Southdown Road he could just see over the fields, and Mr. Brooke's
glass glittered amid the summer foliage. At that moment he loved the
ugly little village, with its barren downs and all its anomalous
aspects of town and country. He thought of his friends there, and his
life appeared to be theirs, and theirs his, and he wished it might