man grandchildren, eh!' he muttered. No Beltham had ever married
a foreigner. What was the time fixed between us for the marriage? He
wanted to see his line safe before he died. 'How do I know this foreign
woman'll bear?' he asked, expecting an answer. His hand was on the
back of a chair, grasping and rocking it; his eyes bent stormily on the
carpet; they were set blinking rapidly after a glance at me. Altogether
his self-command was creditable to Janet's tuition.

Janet met me next day, saying with some insolence (so it struck me from
her liveliness): 'Well, it's all right, Harry? Now you'll be happy, I
hope. I did not shine in my reply. Her amiable part appeared to be to
let me see how brilliant and gracious the commonplace could be made to
look. She kept Heriot at the Grange, against the squire's remonstrance
and her mother's. 'It 's to keep him out of harm's way: the women he
knows are not of the best kind for him,' she said, with astounding
fatuity. He submitted, and seemed to like it. She must be teaching
Temple to skate figures in the frost, with a great display of
good-humoured patience, and her voice at musical pitches. But her
principal affectation was to talk on matters of business with Mr. Burgin
and Mr. Trewint, the squire's lawyer and bailiff, on mines and interest,
on money and economical questions; not shrinking from politics either,
until the squire cries out to the males assisting in the performance,
'Gad, she 's a head as good as our half-dozen put together,' and they
servilely joined their fragmentary capitals in agreement. She went so
far as to retain Peterborough to teach her Latin. He was idling in the
expectation of a living in the squire's gift.

The annoyance for me was that I could not detach myself from a
contemplation of these various scenes, by reverting to my life in
Germany. The preposterous closing of my interview with Ottilia blocked
the way, and I was unable to write to her--unable to address her even
in imagination, without pangs of shame at the review of the petty
conspiracy I had sanctioned to entrap her to plight her hand to me, and
without perpetually multiplying excuses for my conduct. So to escape
them I was reduced to study Janet, forming one of her satellites. She
could say to me impudently, with all the air of a friendly comrade, 'Had
your letter from Germany yet, Harry?' She flew--she was always on the
chase. I saw her permit Heriot to kiss her hand, and then the squire
app