tory for him, but not
Janie. Who then?

At this point Mina became sensible of no more than the vaguest visions,
not at all convincing even to herself. By a sad deficiency of
imagination, she could give no definiteness to a picture of Harry
Tristram making love. He had never, to her mind, looked like it with
Janie Iver, even while he had purported to be doing it. He never looked
like it at all, not even as though he could do it. Stay, though! That
new way of his, which she had marked when he came up the hill to thank
her for the flowers, was an exception. But the new way had been for his
mother's sake. Now a man cannot be in love with his mother. The question
grew more puzzling, more annoying, more engrossing still.

While full of these problems, refusing indeed to be anything else, Mina
was surprised by a visit from Miss Swinkerton, who sought a subscription
for the scheme of which an inadequate account has already been given.
Miss Swinkerton (for some reason she was generally known as Miss S., a
vulgar style of description possessing sometimes an inexplicable
appropriateness) was fifty-five, tall and bony, the daughter of a
Rear-Admiral, the sister of an Archdeacon. She lived for good works and
by gossip. Mina's sovereign (foreigners will not grasp the cheap
additional handsomeness of a guinea) duly disbursed, conversation became
general--that is to say, they talked about their neighbors.

"A hard young man," said Miss S. (Why be more genteel than her friends?)
"And if Janie Iver thinks he's in love with her----"

"What do you mean by being in love, Miss Swinkerton?"

Miss Swinkerton had always been rather surprised, not to say hurt, when
the Catechism asked for an explanation of what she meant by the Lord's
Prayer. This question of Mina's was still more uncalled for.

"You know enough English, my dear----"

"It's not a question of English," interrupted Mina, "but of human
nature, Miss Swinkerton."

"When I was a girl there were no such questions."

"What about Lady Tristram, then?"

There was flattery in this, ten or fifteen years of flattery. Miss S.
was unmoved.

"I am happy to say that Lady Tristram never called at Seaview." Miss
S.'s house was called Seaview--Sea-Backview would have been a more
precise description.

"I call him in love with Janie Iver. He must want to marry her or----"

"They do say that money isn't very plentiful at Blent. And there'll be
the Death Duties, you know."

"What are