Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/42

28 opened, and Mrs. Beever exclaimed with some eagerness: "Here he is, perhaps!" Her eagerness was characteristic; it was part of a comprehensive vision in which the pieces had already fallen into sharp adjustment to each other. The young lady she had been talking with had in these few minutes, for some reason, struck her more forcibly than ever before as a possible object of interest to a youth of a candour greater even than any it was incumbent on a respectable mother to cultivate. Miss Armiger had just given her a glimpse of the way she could handle honest gentlemen as "muffs." She was decidedly too unusual to be left out of account. If there was the least danger of Paul's falling in love with her it ought somehow to be arranged that her marriage should encounter no difficulty.

The person now appearing, however, proved to be only Doctor Ramage, who, having a substantial wife of his own, was peculiarly unfitted to promise relief to Mrs. Beever's anxiety. He was a little man who moved, with a warning air, on tiptoe, as if he were playing some drawing-room game of surprises, and who had a face so candid and circular that it suggested a large white pill. Mrs. Beever had once