"Did you see William?" he asked her shortly.
"No," she said. "He wouldn't come in to us. We came away about a quarter of an hour after he had come, without seeing him."
"Ah!"
He was very quiet in speech and manner, with an air as it struck her, of great depression. She could not be sure, until he had spoken, of what had happened, that he had not something deeply to regret upon his own part.
"Better sit down," he said, "and I'll tell you about it. Until William apologizes to me for things he has said, and dismisses that man Coombe for his insolence, I won't see him or have anything to do with him. But I don't want you or the children to make any difference. Let's hope Eleanor will bring him to reason; I know she has a good influence over him. She may not want to meet me; I've thought of that. But I should like you to go to the Grange as usual. I don't want you to quarrel with William either. We'll leave the quarrelling to him, as he seems bent on it."
"Tell me what happened, dear," she said. "He came here on his way home, didn't he?"
"Oh, yes; with an air of coming to put everything right by making handsome concessions over something he doesn't care a hang about. If I was so unreasonable as to question anything he had done he would give it up—of course. I wasn't to be allowed to have had any reason on my side; it didn't matter even that he'd mistaken me, and that I hadn't wanted to stop what he was doing, and had tried to get it carried on. He waved all that aside—didn't want to talk about it. What he did want was very plain. He wanted to show himself as the large-minded man who could make all allowances for a narrow-minded fool of an elder brother always standing on his own petty dignity. However, he'd be careful not to tread on my corns in that way again. Let's forget all about it and begin afresh. I would have swallowed all that—I did swallow it—for there was some right feeling behind it; but...."
"Edmund dear," she interrupted him, "before you go on—oughtn't we to keep that in front of us as the thing that really matters? William is fond of you, and you of him. When Eleanor and I have been talking it over, we...."
"It has got beyond that now," he interrupted her in his turn. "What neither you nor Eleanor can see is that William is not the same man as he used to be. What really matters, you say! What really matters is what he founds himself upon; and what he founds himself upon now is his money, and the place he has made for himself in the world. Fond of me? Yes, I dare say he is. He'd like to do this or that to help me where things are difficult; but it's to be on the understanding that I knuckle under to him. I can't accept his help, or his—or his fondness on those terms. I'm fond of him, you say? Yes—or of what he was before his success spoilt him. When he returns to that, things shall be as they were between us. Until then, I've got to take him as he is now; and without loss of self-respect I can't do it and keep on terms with him."
"What was it, then, that you quarrelled about?"