obsession, as you term it, had been in any degree an apprehension of Rose?"
"Why should he?" Mrs. Beever asked. "Rose, for poor Julia, was on the point of becoming your wife."
"Ah! for all that was to prevent!" Dennis ruefully exclaimed.
"It was to prevent little enough, but Julia never knew how little. Tony asked me a month ago if I thought he might without awkwardness propose to Miss Armiger a visit to the other house. I said 'No, silly boy!' and he dropped the question; but a week later he came back to it. He confided to me that he was ashamed for so long to have done so little for her; and she had behaved in a difficult situation with such discretion and delicacy that to have 'shunted' her, as he said, so completely was a kind of outrage to Julia's affection for her and a slur upon hers for his wife. I said to him that if it would help him a bit I would address her a suggestion that she should honour me with her company. He jumped at that, and I wrote. She jumped, and here she is."
Poor Dennis, at this, gave a spring, as if the young
