It will be said by my critics, especially by my female critics, that in saying this, Adela went a long way towards teaching Mr. Wilkinson the way to woo. Indeed, she brought that accusation against herself, and not lightly. But she was, as she herself had expressed it, driven in the cause of truth to say what she had said. Nor did she, in her heart of hearts, believe that Mr. Wilkinson had any thought of her in saying what she did say. Her mind on that matter had been long made up. She knew herself to be "the poor sequestered stag, left and abandoned by his velvet friend." She had no feeling in the matter which amounted to the slightest hope. He had asked her for her counsel, and she had given him the only counsel which she honestly could give.
Therefore, bear lightly on her, oh my critics! Bear lightly on her especially, my critics feminine. To the worst of your wrath and scorn I willingly subject the other lovers with whom my tale is burthened.
"Yes, I should be better off than Young," said Wilkinson, as though he were speaking to himself. "But that is not the point. I do not know that I have ever looked at it exactly in that light. There is the house, the parsonage I mean. It is full of women"—'twas thus irreverently that he spoke of his mother and sisters—"what other woman would come among them?"
"Oh, that is the treasure for which you have to search"—this she said laughingly. The bitterness of the day was over with her; or at least it then seemed so. She was not even thinking of herself when she said this.
"Would you come to such a house, Adela? You, you yourself?"
"You mean to ask whether, if, as regards other circumstances, I was minded to marry, I would then be deterred by a mother-in-law and sister-in-law?"
"Yes, just so," said Wilkinson, timidly.
"Well, that would depend much upon how well I might like the gentleman; something also upon how much I might like the ladies."
"A man's wife should always be mistress in his own house."
"Oh yes, of course."