"It will suit me to remain here for another ten years, if I am spared so long. Little viper! I suppose this comes from her. After warming her in my bosom when her father died!"
"It can hardly have come from her, seeing that there has never yet been a word spoken between us on the subject. I fear that you greatly mistake the footing on which we stand together. I have no reasonable ground for hoping for a favourable answer."
"Psha! viper!" exclaimed Mrs. Wilkinson, in dire wrath. Mothers are so angry when other girls, not their own, will get offers; so doubly angry when their own sons make them.
"You will make me very unhappy if you speak ill of her," said Arthur.
"Has it ever come into your head to think where your mother and sisters are to live when you turn them out?" said she.
"Littlebath," suggested Arthur.
"Littlebath!" said Mrs. Wilkinson, with all the scorn that she could muster to the service. "Littlebath! I am to put up with the aunt, I suppose, when you take the niece. But I shall not go to Littlebath at your bidding, sir." And so saying, she gathered up her spectacles, and stalked out of the room.
Arthur was by no means satisfied with the interview, and yet had he been wise he might have been. The subject had been broached, and that in itself was a great deal. And the victory had by no means been with Mrs. Wilkinson. She had threatened, indeed, to appeal to Lord Stapledean; but that very threat showed how conscious she was that she had no power of her own to hold her place where she was. He ought to have been satisfied; but he was not so.
And now he had to wait for his answer from Adela. Gentlemen who make offers by letter must have a weary time of it, waiting for the return of post, or for the return of two posts, as was the case in this instance. And Arthur had a weary time of it. Two evenings he had to pass, after the conversation above recounted, before he got his letter; and dreadful evenings they were. His mother was majestic, glum, and cross; his sisters were silent and dignified. It was clear to him that they had all been told; and so told as to be leagued in enmity against him. What account their mother may have given to them of their future poverty, he knew not; but he felt certain that she had explained to them how cruelly he meant to turn them out on the wide world; unnatural ogre that he was.
Mary was his favourite, and to her he did say a few words. "Mamma has told you what I have done, hasn't she?"