and beating her ladyship--a friend of
Heriot's, by the way. Concerning Heriot, my aunt Dorothy was in trouble.
She could not, she said, approve his behaviour in coming to this
neighbourhood at all, and she hinted that I might induce him to keep
away. I mentioned Julia Bulsted's being in mourning, merely to bring in
her name tentatively.

'Ay, mourning's her outer rig, never doubt,' said the squire. 'Flick
your whip at her, she 's a charitable soul, Judy Bulsted! She knits
stockings for the poor. She'd down and kiss the stump of a sailor on a
stick o' timber. All the same, she oughtn't to be alone. Pity she hasn't
a baby. You and I'll talk it over by-and-by, Harry.'

Kiomi was spoken of, and Lady Maria Higginson, and then Heriot.

'M-m-m-m rascal!' hummed the squire. 'There's three, and that's not
enough for him. Six months back a man comes over from Surreywards, a
farm he calls Dipwell, and asks after you, Harry; rigmaroles about a
handsome lass gone off... some scoundrel! You and I'll talk it over
by-and-by, Harry.'

Janet raised and let fall her eyebrows. The fiction, that so much having
been said, an immediate show of reserve on such topics preserved her
in ignorance of them, was one she subscribed to merely to humour the
squire. I was half in doubt whether I disliked or admired her want of
decent hypocrisy. She allowed him to suppose that she did not hear, but
spoke as a party to the conversation. My aunt Dorothy blamed Julia. The
squire thundered at Heriot; Janet, liking both, contented herself with
impartial comments.

'I always think in these cases that the women must be the fools,' she
said. Her affectation was to assume a knowledge of the world and all
things in it. We rode over to Julia's cottage, on the outskirts of
the estate now devolved upon her husband. Irish eyes are certainly
bewitching lights. I thought, for my part, I could not do as the captain
was doing, serving his country in foreign parts, while such as these
were shining without a captain at home. Janet approved his conduct, and
was right. 'What can a wife think the man worth who sits down to guard
his house-door?' she answered my slight innuendo. She compared the man
to a kennel-dog. 'This,' said I, 'comes of made-up matches,' whereat she
was silent.

Julia took her own view of her position. She asked me whether it was
not dismal for one who was called a grass widow, and was in reality
a salt-water one, to keep fresh, with a lapdog, a coo