‘I am not responsible,’ said Mrs Gowan, ‘for your conscience, you know.’
Poor Mr Meagles looked aghast with astonishment.
‘If I am unluckily obliged to carry a cap about with me, which is yours and fits you,’ pursued Mrs Gowan, ‘don’t blame me for its pattern, Papa Meagles, I beg!’
‘Why, good Lord, ma’am!’ Mr Meagles broke out, ‘that’s as much as to state—’
‘Now, Papa Meagles, Papa Meagles,’ said Mrs Gowan, who became extremely deliberate and prepossessing in manner whenever that gentleman became at all warm, ‘perhaps to prevent confusion, I had better speak for myself than trouble your kindness to speak for me. It’s as much as to state, you begin. If you please, I will finish the sentence. It is as much as to state—not that I wish to press it or even recall it, for it is of no use now, and my only wish is to make the best of existing circumstances—that from the first to the last I always objected to this match of yours, and at a very late period yielded a most unwilling consent to it.’
‘Mother!’ cried Mr Meagles. ‘Do you hear this! Arthur! Do you hear this!’
‘The room being of a convenient size,’ said Mrs Gowan, looking about as she fanned herself, ‘and quite charmingly adapted in all respects to conversation, I should imagine I am audible in any part of it.’
Some moments passed in silence, before Mr Meagles could hold himself in his chair with sufficient security to prevent his breaking out of it at the next word he spoke. At last he said: ‘Ma’am, I am very unwilling to revive them, but I must remind you what my opinions and my course were, all along, on that unfortunate subject.’
‘O, my dear sir!’ said Mrs Gowan, smiling and shaking her head with accusatory intelligence, ‘they were well understood by me, I assure you.’
‘I never, ma’am,’ said Mr Meagles, ‘knew unhappiness before that time, I never knew anxiety before that time. It was a time of such distress to me that—’ That Mr Meagles could really say no more about it, in short, but passed his handkerchief before his face.