In the first place, as we know, the mistress of Maxwell Court had left Mellor and its new occupants unvisited; she had plainly understood it to be her brother's wish that she should do so.

How, indeed, could you know the women without knowing Richard Boyce?
which, according to Lord Maxwell, was impossible.

And now it was Lord Maxwell who had suggested not only that after all it would be kind to call upon the poor things, who were heavily weighted enough already with Dick Boyce for husband and father, but that it would be a graceful act on his sister's part to ask the girl and her mother to luncheon.

Dick Boyce of course must be made to keep his distance, but the resources of civilisation were perhaps not unequal to the task of discriminating, if it were prudently set about.

At any rate Miss Raeburn gathered that she was expected to try, and instead of pressing her brother for explanations she held her tongue, paid her call forthwith, and wrote her note.
But although Aldous, thinking no doubt that he had been already sufficiently premature, had said nothing at all as to his own feelings to his great-aunt, she knew perfectly well that he had said a great deal on the subject of Miss Boyce and her mother to Lady Winterbourne, the only woman in the neighbourhood with whom he was ever really confidential.