Page:The Wheel of Time, Collaboration, Owen Wingrave (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1893).djvu/22

14 if she had put it forward; if he had the ideal he had just described, it was not because his own profile was his standard. What she herself saw in it was a force for coercing heiresses. She had, however, to be patient, and she promised herself to be adroit; which was all the easier, as she really liked Fanny Knocker.

The girl's parents had at last taken a house in Ennismore Gardens, and the friend of her mother's youth had been confronted with the question of redeeming the pledges uttered in Paris. This unsophisticated and united family, with relations to visit and school-boys' holidays to outlive, had spent the winter in the country and had but lately begun to talk of itself, extravagantly, of course, through Mrs. Knocker's droll lips, as open to social attentions. Lady Greyswood had not been false to her vows; she had, on the contrary, recognized from the first that, if he could only be made to see it, Fanny Knocker would be just the person to fill out poor Maurice's blanks. She had kept this confidence to herself, but it had made her very kind to the young lady. One