“Well, my dear doctor,” he said, “my dear Greville, if you will permit me to call you that once more—for the sake of harmony, for the sake of that peace which must dominate a home, I consented to write that letter and to do many other things which were a natural consequence of it. When your reply came, I recognized the good sense of it at once; I knew, as any man of the world must know, that my poor boy cannot be wholly absolved, that it takes two to make an elopement no less than a marriage. I knew—but women have not our penetration and common reasonableness, our sagacity, shall I say?
“Lady Fergusson,” he continued, “could not take that view, and compromise made me, in that moment of stress and disaster, when the Hall and all it stood for seemed to be toppling about us like a house of cards, compromise made me as wax in her hands.
“I have come now, in humility and shame, to apologize for my share of this most lamentable quarrel, and to ask you, for the sake of my poor wife, to overlook it, to forget it, and once more to show your magnanimity by coming to the Hall and doing something to relieve that poor distraught creature’s pain.
“I ask nothing for myself,” he concluded. “I merely grovel. But for her sake you will come, won’t you? No one knows her symptoms as you do. In no one has she such confidence.”
I had listened to the harangue without a word, but not without many thoughts. Chiefly had I been wondering if husband and wife were in collusion, or if they were really acting independently. To this day I don’t know.
As he came to an end, he advanced to me with an extended hand, which I took.
“I will come to the Hall to-morrow,” I said. “But I should like as much publicity to be given to your new friendly attitude as to the hostile one now terminating. I count on you to let others know, as well as myself, that you have reason to be ashamed of your conduct towards me.”
“How?” he asked blankly.
“I must leave that to you,” I said.
I was relieved that the hatchet was buried, not because I had been incommoded by the feud to any great extent, but quarrels are not in my line, and this one was uncomfortable to the village. More than uncomfortable: degrading.