"I don't know that she does: but the mere fact of possible opposition might be enough to alarm the delicacy you have observed in her."
"Ah—yes: on her boy's account."
"Partly, doubtless, on her boy's account."
"So that, if my brother objects to a divorce, all he has to do is to announce his objection? But, my dear sir, you are giving your case into my hands!" She flashed an amused smile on him.
"Since you say you are Madame de Malrive's friend, could there be a better place for it?"
As she turned her eyes on him he seemed to see, under the flitting lightness of her glance, the sudden concentrated expression of the ancestral will. "I am Fanny's friend, certainly. But with us family considerations are paramount. And our religion forbids divorce."
"So that, inevitably, your brother will oppose it?"
She rose from her seat, and stood fretting with her slender boot-tip the minute red pebbles of the path.
"I must really go in: my mother will never forgive me for deserting her."
"But surely you owe me an answer?" Durham protested, rising also.