is
departure. She was so exactly what he liked a woman to be. She might
have made difficulties, or have been sentimental. If she had been a
girl, it would have been necessary to set up a sort of nursery for her,
but this fine amenable, sensible creature could take perfect care of
herself. It was only necessary to express a wish, and she not only knew
how to carry it out, but was ready to do so without question. As far as
he was concerned, he was willing to leave all to her own taste. It was
such decent taste. She had no modern ideas which might lead during his
absence to any action likely to disturb or annoy him. What she would
like best to do would be to stay at Palstrey and enjoy the beauty of it.
She would spend her days in strolling through the gardens, talking to
the gardeners, who had all grown fond of her, or paying little visits to
old people or young ones in the village. She would help the vicar's wife
in her charities, she would appear in the Manor pew at church regularly,
make the necessary dull calls, and go to the unavoidable dull dinners
with a faultless amiability and decorum.

"As I remarked when you told me you had asked her to marry you," said
Lady Maria on the occasion of his lunching with her on running up to
town for a day's business, "you showed a great deal more sense than most
men of your age and rank. If people _will_ marry, they should choose the
persons least likely to interfere with them. Emily will never interfere
with you. She cares a great deal more about your pleasure than her own.
And as to that, she's so much like a big, healthy, good child that she
would find pleasure wheresoever you dropped her."

This was true, yet the healthy, childish creature had, in deep privacy,
cried a little, and was pathetically glad to feel that the Osborns were
to be near her, and that she would have Hester to think of and take care
of during the summer.

It was pathetic that she should cherish an affection so ingenuous for
the Osborns, for one of them at least had no patience with her. To
Captain Osborn her existence and presence in the near neighbourhood were
offences. He told himself that she was of the particular type of woman
he most disliked. She was a big, blundering fool, he said, and her size
and very good nature itself got on his nerves and irritated him.

"She looks so deucedly prosperous with her first-rate clothes and her
bouncing health," he said.

"The tread of her big feet makes me mad