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"Aye, what a crowd of 'em!"

"It gives you a chance now. Three, if you will, shall marry French blood, and two shall marry English money. But I warn you that your English marriages must be made quickly or they will not be made at all."

"Who is Austen to marry?"

"Why, Henrietta. He sits by her and sighs and twists himself about while his spurs tear the gallons from her petticoat. And when they ride out he is always in her company though he speaks only to his horse. I tell you he is very much in love—à l'Angloise. Henrietta had better take him: and let her and Bess be married as soon as possible. The others can wait. They are younger and in less danger of throwing themselves away; besides, I do not think that my compatriots have yet all made up their minds."

It had occurred to her sometimes that de Périgault looked at her more than at her nieces.

§ 3

Gervase was not at ease in his brother's house, though he might well have been so. His uneasiness was not due to his position, since that had always been one of equality, nor to the mere shifting of his quarters, nor to his establishment in a household considerably more luxurious and imposing than he had known at Leasan. After all, he had been born and had lived the first fifteen years of his life in Conster Manor, he had returned to it after his exile, and on Charles's death it would be his. He was far from being a poor relation, even though his personal fortune at the moment was small. Charles gave him every consideration, every privacy, seemed anxious, too, to consult him on the working of the furnace and the Manor estate as if he already had his rights in them . . . . He might have started a new life as a student and a country gentleman. But he could not do it.