Postmaster-General allowed a Saturday half-holiday to his otherwise overworked officials, and they were sure that so good a son as George Roden would occasionally have accompanied his mother, had there been no especial reason against it. From this further surmises arose. Some glance had fallen from the eye of the visitor lady, or perhaps some chance word had been heard from her lips, which created an opinion that she was religious. She probably objected to George Roden because he was anti-religious, or at any rate anti-church, meeting, or chapel-going. It had become quite decided at Holloway that Mrs. Vincent would not put up with the young clerk's infidelity. And it was believed that there had been "words" between the two ladies themselves on the subject of religion, – as to which probably there was no valid foundation, it being an ascertained fact that the two maids who were employed by Mrs. Roden were never known to tell anything of their mistress.
It was decided at Holloway that Mrs. Roden and Mrs. Vincent were cousins. They were like enough in face and near enough in age to have been sisters; but old Mrs. Demijohn, of No. 10, Paradise Row, had declared that had George been a nephew his aunt would not have wearied in her endeavour to convert him. In such a case there would have been intimacy in spite of disapproval. But a first cousin once removed might be allowed to go to the Mischief in his own way. Mrs. Vincent was supposed to be the elder cousin, – perhaps three or four years the elder, – and to have therefore something of an authority, but not much. She was stouter, too, less careful to hide what grey hairs years might have produced, and showing manifestly by the nature of her bonnets and shawls that she despised the vanities of the world. Not but that she was always handsomely dressed, as Mrs. Demijohn was very well aware. Less than a hundred a year could not have clothed Mrs. Vincent, whereas Mrs. Roden, as all the world perceived, did not spend half the money. But who does not know that a lady may repudiate vanity in rich silks and cultivate the world in woollen stuffs, or even in calico? Nothing was more certain to Mrs. Demijohn than that Mrs. Vincent was severe, and that Mrs. Roden was soft and gentle. It was assumed also that the two ladies were widows, as no husband or sign of a husband had appeared on the scene. Mrs. Vincent showed manifestly from her deportment, as well as from her title, that she had been a married woman. As to Mrs. Roden, of course, there was no doubt.
In regard to all this the reader may take the settled opinions of Mrs. Demijohn and of Holloway as being nearly true. Riddles may be read very accurately by those who will give sufficient attention and ample time to the reading of them. They who will devote twelve hours a day to the unravelling of acrostics, may discover nearly all the enigmas of a weekly newspaper with a separate editor for such difficulties. Mrs. Demijohn had almost arrived at the facts. The two ladies were second cousins. Mrs. Vincent was a widow, was religious, was austere, was fairly well off, and had quarrelled altogether with her distant relative George of the Post Office. Mrs. Roden, though she went to church, was not so well given to religious observances as her cousin would have her. Hence words had come which Mrs. Roden had borne with equanimity, but had received without effect. Nevertheless the two women loved each other dearly, and it was a great part of the life of each of them that these weekly visits should be made. There was one great fact, as to which Mrs. Demijohn and Holloway were in the wrong. Mrs. Roden was not a widow.
It was not till the Kingsburys had left London that George told his mother of his engagement. She was well acquainted with his intimacy with Lord Hampstead, and knew that he had been staying at Hendon Hall with the Kingsbury family. There had been no reticence between the mother and son as to these people, in regard to whom she had frequently cautioned him that there was danger in such associations with people moving altogether in a different sphere. In answer to this the son had always declared that he did not see the danger. He had not run after Lord Hampstead. Circumstances had thrown them together. They had originally met each other in a small political debating society, and gradually friendship had grown. The lord had sought him, and not he the lord. That, according to his own idea, had been right. Difference in rank, difference in wealth, difference in social regard required as much as that. He, when he had discovered who was the young man whom he had met, stood off somewhat, and allowed the friendship to spring from the other side. He had been slow to accept favour, – even at first to accept hospitality. But whenever the ice had, as he said, been thoroughly broken, then he thought that there was no reason why they should not pull each other out of the cold water together. As for danger, what was there to fear? The Marchioness would not like it? Very probably. The Marchioness was not very much to Hampstead, and was nothing at all to him. The Marquis would not really like it. Perhaps not. But in choosing a friend a young man is not supposed to follow altogether his father's likings, – much less need the chosen friend follow them. But the Marquis, as George pointed out to his mother, was hardly more like other marquises than the son was like other marquis's sons. There was a Radical strain in the family, as was made clear by that tailor who was still sitting for the borough of Edgeware. Mrs. Roden, however, though she lived so much alone, seeing hardly anything of the world except as Mrs. Vincent might be supposed to represent the world, had learned that the feelings and political convictions of the Marquis were hardly what they had been before he had married his present wife. "You may be sure, George," she had said, "that like to like is as safe a motto for friendship as it is for love."
"Not a doubt, mother," he replied; "but before you act upon it you must define 'like.' What makes two men like – or a man and a woman?"
"Outside circumstances of the world more than anything else," she answered, boldly.
"I would fancy that the inside circumstances of the mind would have more to do with it." She shook her head at him, pleasantly, softly, and lovingly, – but still with a settled purpose of contradiction. "I have admitted all along," he continued, "that low birth – "
"I have said nothing of low birth!" Here was a point on which there did not exist full confidence between the mother and son, but in regard to which the mother was always attempting to reassure the son, while he would assume something against himself which she would not allow to pass without an attempt of faint denial.
"That birth low by comparison," he continued, going on with his sentence, "should not take upon itself as much as may be allowed to nobility by descent is certain. Though the young prince may be superior in his gifts to the young shoeblack, and would best show his princeliness by cultivating the shoeblack, still the shoeblack should wait to be cultivated. The world has created a state of things in which the shoeblack cannot do otherwise without showing an arrogance and impudence by which he could achieve nothing."
"Which, too, would make him black his shoes very badly."
"No doubt. That will have to come to pass any way, because the nobler employments to which he will be raised by the appreciating prince will cause him to drop his shoes."
"Is Lord Hampstead to cause you to drop the Post Office?"
"Not at all. He is not a prince nor am I a shoeblack. Though we are far apart, we are not so far apart as to make such a change essential to our acquaintance. But I was saying – I don't know what I was saying."
"You were defining what 'like' means. But people always get muddled when they attempt definitions," said the mother.
"Though it depends somewhat on externals, it has more to do with internals. That is what I mean. A man and woman might live together with most enduring love, though one had been noble and wealthy and the other poor and a nobody. But a thorough brute and a human being of fine conditions can hardly live together and love each other."
"That is true," she said. "That I fear is true."
"I hope it is true."
"It has often to be tried, generally to the great detriment of the better nature."
All this, however, had been said before George Roden had spoken a word to Lady Frances, and had referred only to the friendship as it was growing between her son and the young lord.
The young lord had come on various occasions to the house at Holloway, and
