In this manner Mr Bantling delivered himself while they strolled over the grass in Winchester Square,¹⁰ which, although it had been peppered by the London soot, invited the tread to linger. Henrietta thought her blooming, easy-voiced bachelor, with his impressibility to feminine merit and his splendid range of suggestion, a very agreeable man, and she valued the opportunity he offered her. ‘I don’t know but I would go, if your sister should ask me. I think it would be my duty. What do you call her name?’

‘Pensil. It’s an odd name, but it isn’t a bad one.’

‘I think one name’s as good as another. But what’s her rank?’

‘Oh, she’s a baron’s wife; a convenient sort of rank. You’re fine enough and you’re not too fine.’

‘I don’t know but what she’d be too fine for me. What do you call the place she lives in—Bedfordshire?’

‘She lives away in the northern corner of it. It’s a tiresome country, but I dare say you won’t mind it. I’ll try and run down while you’re there.’

All this was very pleasant to Miss Stackpole, and she was sorry to be obliged to separate from Lady Pensil’s obliging brother. But it happened that she had met the day before, in Piccadilly, some friends whom she had not seen for a year: the Miss Climbers, two ladies from Wilmington, Delaware, who had been travelling on the Continent and were now preparing to re-embark. Henrietta had had a long interview with them on the Piccadilly pavement, and though the three ladies all talked at once they had not exhausted their store. It had been agreed therefore that Henrietta should come and dine with them in their lodgings in Jermyn Street at six o’clock on the morrow, and she now bethought herself of this engagement. She prepared to start for Jermyn Street, taking leave first of Ralph Touchett and Isabel, who, seated on garden chairs in another part of the enclosure, were occupied—if the term may be used—with an exchange of amenities less pointed than the practical colloquy of Miss Stackpole and Mr Bantling. When it had been settled between Isabel and her friend that they should be reunited at some reputable hour at Pratt’s Hotel, Ralph remarked that the latter must have a cab. She couldn’t walk all the way to Jermyn Street.

‘I suppose you mean it’s improper for me to walk alone!’ Henrietta exclaimed. ‘Merciful powers, have I come to this?’

‘There’s not the slightest need of your walking alone,’ Mr Bantling gaily interposed. ‘I should be greatly pleased to go with you.’

‘I simply meant that you’d be late for dinner,’ Ralph returned. ‘Those poor ladies may easily believe that we refuse, at the last, to spare you.’

‘You had better have a hansom, Henrietta,’ said Isabel.

‘I’ll get you a hansom if you’ll trust me,’ Mr Bantling went on. ‘We might walk a little till we meet one.’

‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t trust him, do you?’ Henrietta enquired of Isabel.

‘I don’t see what Mr Bantling could do to you,’ Isabel obligingly answered; ‘but, if you like, we’ll walk with you till you find your cab.’

‘Never mind; we’ll go alone. Come on, Mr Bantling, and take care you get me a good one.’

Mr Bantling promised to do his best, and the two took their departure, leaving the girl and her cousin together in the square, over which a clear September twilight had now begun to gather. It was perfectly still; the wide quadrangle of dusky houses showed lights in none of the windows, where the shutters and blinds were closed; the pavements were a vacant expanse, and, putting aside two small children from a neighbouring slum, who, attracted by symptoms of abnormal animation in the interior, poked their faces