ests. To be fetched to lunch and then to dinner along with the
Gascoignes, to be driven back soon after breakfast the next morning,
and to have brief calls from Gwendolen in which her husband waited for
her outside either on horseback or sitting in the carriage, was all the
intercourse allowed to her mother.

The truth was, that the second time Gwendolen proposed to invite her
mother with Mr. and Mrs. Gascoigne, Grandcourt had at first been
silent, and then drawled, "We can't be having _those people_ always.
Gascoigne talks too much. Country clergy are always bores--with their
confounded fuss about everything."

That speech was full of foreboding for Gwendolen. To have her mother
classed under "those people" was enough to confirm the previous dread
of bringing her too near. Still, she could not give the true
reasons--she could not say to her mother, "Mr. Grandcourt wants to
recognize you as little as possible; and besides it is better you
should not see much of my married life, else you might find out that I
am miserable." So she waived as lightly as she could every allusion to
the subject; and when Mrs. Davilow again hinted the possibility of her
having a house close to Ryelands, Gwendolen said, "It would not be so
nice for you as being near the rectory here, mamma. We shall perhaps be
very little at Ryelands. You would miss my aunt and uncle."

And all the while this contemptuous veto of her husband's on any
intimacy with her family, making her proudly shrink from giving them
the aspect of troublesome pensioners, was rousing more inward
inclination toward them. She had never felt so kindly toward her uncle,
so much disposed to look back on his cheerful, complacent activity and
spirit of kind management, even when mistaken, as more of a comfort
than the neutral loftiness which was every day chilling her. And here
perhaps she was unconsciously finding some of that mental enlargement
which it was hard to get from her occasional dashes into difficult
authors, who instead of blending themselves with her daily agitations
required her to dismiss them.

It was a delightful surprise one day when Mr. and Mrs. Gascoigne were
at Offendene to see Gwendolen ride up without her husband--with the
groom only. All, including the four girls and Miss Merry, seated in the
dining-room at lunch, could see the welcome approach; and even the
elder ones were not without something of Isabel's romantic sense that
the beautiful sister on the