But Adelaide, though she would not yield to her sister, had been frightened.

She knew that she loved the man, and she swore to herself a thousand times that she would not be dictated to by her sister;--but was she prepared to accept the fate which would at once be hers were she now to marry Gerard Maule?
What could she do with a man who had no ideas of his own as to what he ought to do with himself?
Lady Chiltern was in favour of the marriage.

The fortune, she said, was as much as Adelaide was entitled to expect, the man was a gentleman, was tainted by no vices, and was truly in love.

"You had better let them fight it out somewhere else," Lord Chiltern had said when his wife proposed that the invitation to Gerard Maule should be renewed; but Lady Chiltern had known that if "fought out" at all, it must be fought out at Harrington Hall.

"We have asked him to come back," she said to Adelaide, "in order that you may make up your mind.