tainty.

'You are a dear,' she said. Once or twice before she had called me
a dear. It reminded me, as nothing else ever did, that I was a
contemporary of her father's. It is a feeble confession, but I have
known myself refrain from doing occasional agreeable things apprehending
that she might call me a dear.

Chapter 2.II.

Dora had been out three seasons when these things happened. I remember
sharing Edward Harris's anxiety in no slight degree as to how the
situation would resolve itself when she came, the situation consisting
so considerably in his eyes of the second Mrs. Harris, who had
complicated it further with three little red-cheeked boys, all of the
age to be led about the station on very small ponies, and not under any
circumstances to be allowed in the drawing-room when one went to tea
with their mother. No one, except perhaps poor Ted himself, was more
interested than I to observe how the situation did resolve itself, in
the decision of Mrs. Harris that the boys, the two eldest at least, must
positively begin the race for the competitive examinations of the future
without further delay, and that she must as positively be domiciled in
England 'to be near' them, at all events until they had well made the
start. I should have been glad to see them ride their ponies up and down
the Mall a bit longer, poor little chaps; they were still very cherubic
to be invited to take a view of competitive examinations, however
distant; but Mrs. Harris's conviction was not to be overcome. So they
went home to begin, and she went with them, leaving Dora in possession
of her father, her father's house, his pay, his precedence, and all
that was his. Not that I would suggest any friction; I am convinced that
there was nothing like that--at least, nothing that met the eye, or the
ear. Dora adored the three little boys and was extremely kind to their
mother. She regarded this lady, I have reason to believe, with
the greatest indulgence, and behaved towards her with the greatest
consideration; I mean she had unerring intuitions as to just when,
on afternoons when Mrs. Harris was at home from dusk till dinner, she
should be dying for a walk. One could imagine her looking with her grey
eyes at dear mamma's horizon and deciding that papa was certainly not
enough to fill it by himself, deciding at the same time that he was
never likely to be ousted there, only accompanied, in a less important
and entirely innocent degree. It may