as it is quite impossible that he and I
should ever be anything else to each other, he should not be asked to
come here with any other intention."

"But Madeline, I do not see that it is so impossible."

"Mamma, it is impossible; quite impossible!" To this assertion
Lady Staveley made no answer in words, but there was that in her
countenance which made her daughter understand that she did not quite
agree in this assertion, or understand this impossibility.

"Mamma, it is quite, quite impossible!" Madeline repeated.

"But why so?" said Lady Staveley, frightened by her daughter's
manner, and almost fearing that something further was to come which
had by far better be left unsaid.

"Because, mamma, I have no love to give him. Oh, mamma, do not be
angry with me; do not push me away. You know who it is that I love.
You knew it before." And then she threw herself on her knees, and hid
her face on her mother's lap.

Lady Staveley had known it, but up to that moment she had hoped that
that knowledge might have remained hidden as though it were unknown.

CHAPTER LI

MRS. FURNIVAL'S JOURNEY TO HAMWORTH

When Peregrine got back to The Cleeve he learned that there was a
lady with his mother. He had by this time partially succeeded in
reasoning himself out of his despondency. He had learned at any rate
that his proposition to marry into the Staveley family had been
regarded with favour by all that family except the one whose views
on that subject were by far the most important to him; and he had
learned, as he thought, that Lady Staveley had no suspicion that her
daughter's heart was preoccupied. But in this respect Lady Staveley
had been too cunning for him. "Wait!" he said to himself as he went
slowly along the road. "It's all very well to say wait, but there
are some things which won't bear waiting for. A man who waits never
gets well away with the hounds." Nevertheless as he rode into the
courtyard his hopes were somewhat higher than they had been when he
rode out of it.

"A lady! what lady? You don't mean Lady Mason?"

No. The servant did not mean Lady Mason. It was an elderly stout lady
who had come in a fly, and the elderly stout lady was now in the
drawing-room with his mother. Lady Mason was still up stairs. We all
know who was that elderly stout lady, and we must now go back and say
a few words as to her journey from Orange Street to Hamworth.

On the preceding evening Mrs. Furnival had told Martha