; not at all,« said Gwendolen, with some curtness, and a pretty little
toss of the head as she put on her hat again.
    »About whether you will accept him, then?«
    »Precisely.«
    »Have you given him a doubtful answer?«
    »I have given him no answer at all.«
    »He has spoken so that you could not misunderstand him?«
    »As far as I would let him speak.«
    »You expect him to persevere?« Mrs. Davilow put this question rather
anxiously, and receiving no answer, asked another. »You don't consider that you
have discouraged him?«
    »I daresay not.«
    »I thought you liked him, dear,« said Mrs. Davilow, timidly.
    »So I do, mamma, as liking goes. There is less to dislike about him than
about most men. He is quiet and distingué.« Gwendolen so far spoke with a
pouting sort of gravity; but suddenly she recovered some of her mischievousness,
and her face broke into a smile as she added - »Indeed he has all the qualities
that would make a husband tolerable - battlement, veranda, stables, &amp;c., no
grins and no glass in his eye.«
    »Do be serious with me for a moment, dear. Am I to understand that you mean
to accept him?«
    »Oh pray, mamma, leave me to myself,« said Gwendolen, with a pettish
distress in her voice.
    And Mrs. Davilow said no more.
    When they got home Gwendolen declared that she would not dine. She was
tired, and would come down in the evening after she had taken some rest. The
probability that her uncle would hear what had passed did not trouble her. She
was convinced that whatever he might say would be on the side of her accepting
Grandcourt, and she wished to accept him if she could. At this moment she would
willingly have had weights hung on her own caprice.
    Mr. Gascoigne did hear - not Gwendolen's answers repeated verbatim, but a
softened generalised account of them. The mother conveyed as vaguely as the keen
Rector's questions would let her the impression that Gwendolen was in some
uncertainty about her own mind, but inclined on the whole to acceptance. The
result was that the uncle felt himself called on to interfere: he did not
conceive that he should do his duty in withholding direction from his niece in a
momentous crisis of this kind. Mrs. Davilow ventured a hesitating opinion that
perhaps it would be safer to say nothing
