It was during their invariable _tete-a-tete_ while Mr.Beresford slept that the wished-for conversation took place, and Lady Dighton unconsciously helped her cousin to begin it by telling him laughing that she had been looking out for a wife for him, and found one that she thought would do exactly.
"You must contrive by some means or other," she said, "to get away from Hunsdon a little more than you have been doing, and come over to Dighton for a day or two, that I may introduce you." "I wish with all my heart," he answered quickly, "that I could get away from Hunsdon for a little while, but I am afraid I should use my liberty to go much further than Dighton." She looked at him with surprise.
"I did not know," she said, "that you had any friends in England except here." "I have none.

What I mean is that I want to go back to Canada for a week or two." "To Canada! The other side of the world! What do you mean ?" "Nothing very unreasonable.

I am very uneasy about my father, who is almost as great an invalid as my grandfather, and has no one but an old housekeeper to take care of him.

I should like to go and bring him to England." It was very well for Maurice to try to speak as coolly as possible, and even to succeed in making his voice sound perfectly innocent and natural, but he was of much too frank a nature to play off this little piece of dissimulation without a tell-tale change of countenance.

Lady Dighton's sharp eyes saw quite plainly that there was something untold, but she took no notice of that for the present, and answered as if she saw nothing.
"Have you worse accounts of his health ?" "No; not worse.