Chapter 11 - Page 2

because of the prospective relationship, I should prefer
your consulting Mr. Skipworth or Mr. Redwood."

Mr. Letterblair looked surprised and slightly offended.
It was unusual for a junior to reject such an opening.

He bowed. "I respect your scruple, sir; but in this
case I believe true delicacy requires you to do as I ask.
Indeed, the suggestion is not mine but Mrs. Manson
Mingott's and her son's. I have seen Lovell Mingott;
and also Mr. Welland. They all named you."

Archer felt his temper rising. He had been somewhat
languidly drifting with events for the last fortnight, and
letting May's fair looks and radiant nature obliterate
the rather importunate pressure of the Mingott claims.
But this behest of old Mrs. Mingott's roused him to a
sense of what the clan thought they had the right to
exact from a prospective son-in-law; and he chafed at
the role.

"Her uncles ought to deal with this," he said.

"They have. The matter has been gone into by the
family. They are opposed to the Countess's idea; but
she is firm, and insists on a legal opinion."

The young man was silent: he had not opened the
packet in his hand.

"Does she want to marry again?"

"I believe it is suggested; but she denies it."

"Then--"

"Will you oblige me, Mr. Archer, by first looking
through these papers? Afterward, when we have talked
the case over, I will give you my opinion."

Archer withdrew reluctantly with the unwelcome
documents. Since their last meeting he had half-unconsciously
collaborated with events in ridding himself of the burden
of Madame Olenska. His hour alone with her by
the firelight had drawn them into a momentary intimacy
on which the Duke of St. Austrey's intrusion with
Mrs. Lemuel Struthers, and the Countess's joyous greeting
of them, had rather providentially broken. Two
days later Archer had assisted at the comedy of her
reinstatement in the van der Luydens' favour, and had
said to himself, with a touch of tartness, that a lady
who knew how to thank all-powerful elderly gentlemen
to such good purpose for a bunch of flowers did not
need either the private consolations or the public
championship of a young man of his small compass. To look
at the matter in this light simplified his own case and
surprisingly furbished up all the dim domestic virtues.
He could not picture May Welland, in whatever
conceivable emergency, hawking about her private difficulties
and lavishing her confidences on strange men; and
she had never seemed to him finer or fairer than in the
week that followed. He had even yielded to her wish
for a long engagement, since she had found the one
disarming answer to his plea for haste.