“My dear, it hardly looked like it.”
“You must allow me some self-respect, mamma.”
Mr. Pocklington, entering, overheard these words. “Hallo!” said he. “What’s the matter?”
“Why, my dear, Laura declares that she will have nothing to say to George Neston.”
“Well, that’s just your own view, isn’t it?” A silence ensued. “It seems to me you are agreed.”
It really did look like it; but they had been on the verge of a pretty quarrel all the same: and Mr. Pocklington was confirmed in the opinion he had lately begun to entertain that, when paradoxes of mental process are in question, there is in truth not much to choose between wives and daughters.
Meanwhile, George Neston was steadily and unflinchingly devouring his humble-pie. He sought and obtained Gerald’s forgiveness, after half an hour of grovelling abasement. He listened to Tommy Myles’s grave rebuke and Sidmouth Vane’s cynical raillery without a smile or a tear. He even brought himself to accept with docility a letter full of Christian feeling which Isabel Bourne was moved to write.
All these things, in fact, affected him little in comparison with the great question of his relations with the Pocklingtons. That, he felt, must be settled at once, and, with his white sheet yet round him and his taper still in his hand, he went to call on Mrs. Pocklington.
He found that lady in an attitude of aggressive tranquillity. With careful ostentation she washed her hands of the whole affair. Left to her own way, she might have been inclined to consider that George’s foolish recklessness had been atoned for by his manly retractation—or, on the other hand, she might not. It mattered very little which would have been the case; and, if it comforted him, he was at liberty to suppose that she would have embraced the former opinion. The decision did not lie with her. Let him ask Laura and Laura’s father. They had made up their minds, and it was not in her province or power to try to change their minds for them. In fact, Mrs. Pocklington took up the position which Mr. Spenlow has made famous—only she had two partners where Mr. Spenlow had but one. George had a shrewd idea that her neutrality covered a favourable inclination towards himself, and thanked her warmly for not ranking herself among his enemies.
“I am even emboldened,” he said, “to ask your advice how I can best overcome Miss Pocklington’s adverse opinion.”