She murmured, “I remember.” (“Nothing in it, dear child; nothing in it!”)
There came back a letter from Colonel Pyke Pounce in which Colonel Pyke Pounce also had endeavoured to give a meaning to his words, and had succeeded. Now Harry knew his problem of moral conduct in a fiercer form; now, resolving to do what he told himself was the right thing and not the caddish thing, he took the step that made him be the howling cad that they would think him. (“But, Rosalie, gave me you!”)
He had resolved that he must accept the invitation, present himself at the house—and let the hour decide. As the situation revealed itself so he would accept it. If it was made clear to him, as the Pyke Pounce letter much gave him to believe, that proposal for Laetitia’s hand was expected of him, he would “do the right thing” and stand by what his behaviour apparently had led them to expect; if the way still seemed open, the door not shut behind him, he would very frankly explain to Laetitia’s grisly father that he thought it best his visits to the house from now should cease. The hour should decide! But there was in the hour, when it came, one terrible, one lovely element that he never had expected to be there. In all his visits to the house Rosalie never had been met on any other day than Saturday. This dinner was on the Monday, and arriving to face and carry through his ordeal, he was startled, he was utterly shaken to see her there. (“To see my darling there.”)
O forces outside themselves! “When you had to pass me in the passage nothing mattered then—except I could not let you pass.”
So it was that now, the right thing not having been done on that night, the right thing in this new position must be done to-day. They were entitled to tell him to his face what they thought of him and they must have their right. That was his view and he would not abate it.
“They’ll kill you, Harry.”
They had come by this to the corner of Pilchester Square and there he bade her wait. She said again, part laughing, most in fear, “They’ll kill you.”
“I’ve got to give them the chance to do their best.”
And off he went, strongly, erect. One who never... but marched breast forward.
Waiting for him, she really was terrified for him. Ferocious Uncle Pyke! Terrific Aunt Belle! Swollen and infuriated Uncle Pyke! Bitter and outraged Aunt Belle!