‘Well, Albinia,’ said Mr. Kendal, after seeing Mr. Dusautoy on his return from London.
There was such a look of deprecation about him, that she exclaimed, ‘One would really think you had been accepting this charming son-in-law.’
‘Suppose I had,’ he said, rather quaintly; then, as he saw her hands held up, ‘conditionally, you understand, entirely conditionally. What could I do, when Dusautoy entreated me, with tears in his eyes, not to deprive him of the only chance of saving his nephew?’
‘Umph,’ was the most innocent sound Albinia could persuade herself to make.
‘Besides,’ continued Mr. Kendal, ‘it will be better to have the affair open and avowed than to have all this secret plotting going on without being able to prevent it. I can always withhold my consent if he should not improve, and Dusautoy declares nothing would be such an incentive.’
‘May it prove so!’
‘You see,’ he pursued, ‘as his uncle says, nothing can be worse than driving him to these resorts, and when he is once of age, there’s an end of all power over him to hinder his running straight to ruin. Now, when he is living at the Vicarage, we shall have far more opportunity of knowing how he is going on, and putting a check on their intercourse, if he be unsatisfactory.’
‘If we can.’
‘After all, the young man has done nothing that need blight his future life. He has had great disadvantages, and his steady attachment is much in his favour. His uncle tells me he promises to become all that we could wish, and, in that case, I do not see that I have the right to refuse the offer, when things have gone so far—conditionally, of course.’ He dwelt on that saving clause like a salve for his misgivings.
‘And what is to become of Gilbert and Maurice, with him always about the house?’ exclaimed Albinia.