g; "so it don't
mean that."

"I should not like to say anything ridiculous. Then, if she may marry,
it only remains that she and you should be suited. Do you object to me
as a son-in-law?"

It is impossible to convey the impression of the manner, winning, half
humourous, half dry, supremely careless and confident, in which all
this was said on the minister's part. It was something almost
impossible at the moment to withstand, and it fidgetted Mrs. Starling
to be under the power of it. Her grudge against the minister was even
increased by it, and yet she could not give vent to the feeling.

"I'm not called upon to make objections against you in any way," she
answered rather vaguely.

"That means, of course, that you have no objections to make?"

"I don't make any," said Mrs. Starling shortly.

"I must be content with that," said Mr. Masters, smiling. "Diana, your
mother makes no objections." And rising, he went and gravely kissed her.

I do not know what tied Mrs. Starling's tongue. She sat before the fire
with her hands in her lap, in an inward fury of dull displeasure; she
had untold objections to this arrangement; and yet, though she knew she
must speak now or never, she could not speak. Whether it were the spell
of the minister's manner, which, as I said, worked its charm upon her
as it did upon others; whether it were the prick of conscience, warning
her that she had interfered once too often already in her daughter's
life affairs; or whether, finally, she had an instinctive sense that
things were gone too far for her hindering hand, she fumed in secret,
and did nothing. She was a woman of sense; she knew that if a man like
Mr. Masters loved her daughter, and had got her daughter's good-will,
it would be an ill waste of strength on her part to try to break the
arrangement. It might be done; but it would not be worth the scandal
and the confusion. And she was not sure that it could be done.

So she sat chewing the cud of her mortification and ire, giving little
heed to what words passed between the others. It had come to this! She
had schemed, she had put a violent hand upon Diana's fate, to turn it
her own way, and now _this_ was the way it had gone! All her wrong
deeds for nothing! She had purposed, as she said, that Diana should
take care of her; therefore Diana should not marry any poor and proud
young officer, nor any officer at all, to carry her away beyond reach
and into a sphere beyond and above the