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“She is a very charming woman,” said Mrs. Jennings. “I do not say that she is not. She is a good deal more charming than I ever was; and she has done extremely well for herself; and I am not in the least ashamed of the connection. But I have known her since she was a girl in a very bad bonnet, and I say to you, and I say it as her friend, and as a woman who has the best interests of her family at heart, that you are to beware of her.”

“Mrs. Jennings,” said Elinor, quietly.

“She is not wicked. But she is always scheming. She cannot help it. It is her nature, like a cat’s. She has never sat in a room in her life that she did not come out of it knowing where every stick of furniture was kept and who was to inherit it.” She leaned forward, and her voice dropped, in the way of the deaf, to an unexpected and thrilling whisper.

“And now she has got three daughters, and no son, which is the greatest disappointment of her life, and she is going about the whole of the West of England looking at every young man that has a decent income and a good nose as though he were a leg of mutton.”

“I noticed,” said Marianne, with an effort at lightness, “that she was looking at Henry.”

“She was looking at Henry, and has asked what I know about his parentage more times than I can count. Though that is one secret that shall never leave my lips.” The old lady’s eyes travelled, in a slow deliberate arc, and came to rest, with a look that was remarkably like a wink, upon a tall dark boy in an evening coat, who was standing at the far end, with an engraving in his hand, listening with perfect civility to Miss Georgiana Ferrars on the subject of the harp. He was not, in the least, attending. Mrs. Jennings lifted one white eyebrow, high, and held it there, and it seemed to Marianne that the old face said, more plainly than a paragraph, There. You see.

The boy looked up. It was quite by accident. He met the old lady’s eye, and it was noticed with delight by those who saw it that he took in the whole situation in a moment, and, with a barely perceptible lowering of the lid, lifted his own eyebrow in reply.

“That is a very quick boy,” said Mrs. Jennings, with deep satisfaction. “He has his father’s looks, and very likely his mother’s heart, and God knows where he got the sense. Oh, yes, of course!” She nodded towards Marianne. “We do know where he got the sense. And we hope, the morals of the Colonel. He is the only person in this room that knows exactly what I am telling you.”

She turned her face back. “I daresay I may be getting old. I do not deny it. I have had a good many years, and they have taken a good deal of my hearing, and all my figure, and most of my knees. But there is not one thing the matter with my observation, and I tell you that Lucy Ferrars is putting something together, and that boy’s name is in it. I do not know what. I do not know exactly what she wants. But I have seen that look before. It is the look that she had in the year eleven, upon Edward’s arm.”

Elinor’s face changed. It was a small change, and it did not last; but Marianne, who had known it for thirty years, saw a shadow cross it, like the passing of a cloud over a field.

“The children are young yet,” said Elinor, slowly.

Mrs. Jennings sniffed. “Did I not just tell you she is always scheming? You may believe me, Elinor, she makes her plans three steps ahead of the rest.”

She patted Marianne’s hand. “I am saying that you are to watch. I am saying, above all, my dears, that you are not to tell her one single thing, about anybody, that you would not be prepared to see in the newspaper on Saturday morning. There are some people like that in the world.”

“We shall be very careful,” said Marianne, smiling mischievously.

“You had better be. I have told Charlotte the same. I have told Palmer, and he has said that it is what he has been saying for twenty years, and that nobody listens to him.” She gave a great, gusty, contented sigh. “There. That is what I wished to say. It was a load off my mind. I have been carrying it about all winter.”

The doors at the end of the room opened, with a gust of male voices and a strong smell of port; and the gentlemen came in. Mrs. Jennings put on a smile so broad and so innocent that no one, standing near, would have supposed, for an instant, that it had ever been anything else.

“And that reminds me,” said she, in a loud voice, to the drawing-room at large, “of the Colonel. Colonel! Come and sit by me. I have not had the pleasure of scolding you all evening.”

He came. He sat upon the sofa, with his back very straight, and his hands upon his knees, and received the scolding, which concerned a matter of how best to take care of rheumatic complaints, with the composure of a man who has been listening to it for thirty years.

Marianne, rising to make way, met Elinor’s eyes over the old lady’s cap, and saw, in that quiet grey gaze, something extremely like laughter.

They drove home under a sky full of stars, and the lamps of the carriages moved slowly along the drive, and the night air was full of the smell of cut hay.

“Henry, my dear. What did Mrs. Jennings say to you?”

“Nothing, Mamma. She did not say anything at all.”

“She looked at you.”

“She lifted her eyebrow,” said Henry cheerfully. “I lifted mine. It was a great success.” He considered it. “Mrs. Robert Ferrars asked me many things, at dinner, such as whether I had thought of the Bar. She said she had been told that I was very clever, and that she felt sure I would do very well, and that there was a great deal in a connection. And she gave me a sort of a look.”

“You must be very careful of what you say to her, Henry,” said Marianne. “I do not want to make you afraid; but Mrs. Jennings thinks —”

“I know what she thinks. I was listening.” He laughed. “I do not mind it, Mamma.” He yawned. “I do think that I want to be clever, but not too clever exactly. I want to be useful. I have been thinking about it a good deal. I think that I should like to do something about the boots.”

“The boots?”

“The boys that have not any.” He said it with great simplicity. “I have been reading about it, in Uncle Edward’s papers.” He yawned, hugely.

He put his head back upon the cushion and closed his eyes. Marianne looked at him for a long time, in the dark, with a curious tightness in her throat; and it was some time before she noticed that, by some peculiar reversal of the usual order, his hand, which lay upon the seat between them, had come to rest upon hers.

Chapter XXXII.