"Very well. Mr. Brion shall go on. But before he does so," said Mr. Yelverton, still standing, leaning on the table, and looking round on the little group with glowing eyes, "I will ask leave to make a statement. I am so happy—Mrs. Duff-Scott would have known it in an hour or two—I am so happy as to be Miss King's promised husband, and I hope to be her husband actually by this time to-morrow." Patty gave a little hysterical cry, and snatched at her handkerchief, in which her face was immediately buried. Mrs. Duff-Scott leaned back in her chair with a stoical composure, as if inured to thunderbolts, and waited for what would happen next. "I know it is very short notice," he went on, looking at the elder lady with a half-tender, half-defiant smile, "but my available time here is limited, and Elizabeth and I did not begin to care for each other yesterday. I persuaded her this morning to consent to an early and quiet marriage, for various reasons that I do not need to enter into now; and she has given her consent—provided only that Mrs. Duff-Scott has no objection."
"But I have the greatest objection," said that lady, emphatically. "Not to your marrying Elizabeth—you know I am quite agreeable to that—but to your doing it in such an unreasonable way. To-morrow! you must be joking. It is preposterous, on the face of it."
"You are thinking of clothes, of course."
"No, I am not thinking of clothes. I am thinking of what people will say. You can have no idea of the extraordinary tales that will get about. I must consider Elizabeth."
"I consider Elizabeth," he said. "And before Mr. Brion makes his communication, whatever it may be, I should like to have it settled and understood that the arrangements she and I have made will be permitted to stand." He paused, and stood looking at Mrs. Duff-Scott, with an air that impressed her with the hopelessness of attempting to oppose such a man as that.
"I don't know what to say," she said. "We will talk it over presently."
"No, I want it settled now. Elizabeth will do whatever you desire, but I want her to please me." The major chuckled, and, hearing him, Mr. Yelverton laughed for a moment, and then bent his emphatic eyes upon the old man sitting silent before his unopened papers. "I want you and everybody to understand that whatever is to be said concerns my wife and sisters, Mr. Brion."
"Very good, sir," said Mr. Brion. "I am delighted to hear it. At the same time I would suggest that it might be wiser not to hurry things quite so much."
At this point Patty, who had been laughing and crying in her handkerchief, and clinging to Eleanor, who had come round the table and was hanging over her, suddenly broke into the discussion. "Oh, let them, let them, let them!" she exclaimed eagerly, to the bewilderment of the uninitiated, who were quite sure that some social disability was about to be attached to the bride elect, from which her lover was striving to rescue her. "Do let them be married to-morrow, dear Mrs. Duff-Scott, if Mr. Yelverton wishes it. Elizabeth knows why she consents—I know, too—so does Nelly. Give them your permission now, as he says, before Mr. Brion goes on—how can anyone say anything against it if you approve? Let it be all settled now—absolutely settled—so that no one can undo it afterwards." She turned and looked at the major with such a peculiar light and earnestness in her face that the little man, utterly adrift himself, determined at once to anchor himself to her. "Look here," he said, in his gentle way, but with no sign of indecision, "I am the head of the house, and if anybody has any authority over Elizabeth here, it is I. Forgive me, my dear"—to his wife at the other end of the table—"if I seem to take too much upon myself, but it appears to me that I ought to act in this emergency. Mr. Yelverton, we have every reason to trust your motives and conduct, and Elizabeth's also; and she is her own mistress in every way. So you may tell her from my wife and me that we hope she will do whatever seems right to herself, and that what makes her happy will make us so."
Mrs. Duff-Scott got up from her chair proudly, as if to leave the room where this outrage had been put upon her; but she sat down again and wept a few tears instead. At the unwonted sight of which Patty flew round to her and took her majestic head into her young arms. "Ah! how ungrateful we seem to hurt and vex you," she murmured, in the tone of a mother talking to a suffering child, "but you don't know how it is all going to turn out. If you give them your consent now, you will see how glad you will be in a little while."