For she felt sure she
would blush crimson when she met her mother; but as she blushed
habitually when strangers came in, the cause of it might thus,
perhaps, she vainly flattered herself, escape even those lynx-like
eyes of Mrs. Clifford's.
The great Q.C., a big, overbearing man, with a pair of huge burly
hands that somehow seemed to form his chief feature, was a little
bit blustering in his talk, as usual; the more so because he had
just learned incidentally that something had gone wrong between
his daughter Gwendoline and Granville Kelmscott. For though that
little episode of private wooing had run its course nominally
without the knowledge or consent of either family, Mr. Gilbert
Gildersleeve, at least, had none the less been aware for many weeks
past of the frequent meetings between Gwendoline and Granville
in the dell just beyond the disputed boundary line. And as Mr.
Gildersleeve disliked Colonel Kelmscott of Tilgate Park, for a
pig-headed esquire, almost as cordially as Colonel Kelmscott disliked
Mr. Gildersleeve in return for a rascally lawyer, it had given the
great Q.C. no little secret satisfaction in his own soul to learn
that his daughter Gwendoline was likely to marry the Colonel's son
and heir, directly against the wishes and consent of his father.
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