“Well, then—please begin with my daughter-in-law!”
He gave her back in the same tone of banter: “Agreed: if you’ll agree to feel as I do about the pressing necessity of our getting married.”
“I want to talk to you about that too. You don’t know what a weight is off my mind! With Sophy here for good, I shall feel so differently about leaving Effie. I’ve seen much more accomplished governesses—to my cost!—but I’ve never seen a young thing more gay and kind and human. You must have noticed, though you’ve seen them so little together, how Effie expands when she’s with her. And that, you know, is what I want. Madame de Chantelle will provide the necessary restraint.” She clasped her hands on his arm. “Yes, I’m ready to go with you now. But first of all—this very moment!—you must come with me to Effie. She knows, of course, nothing of what’s been happening; and I want her to be told first about you.”
Effie, sought throughout the house, was presently traced to the school-room, and thither Darrow mounted with Anna. He had never seen her so alight with happiness, and he had caught her buoyancy of mood. He kept repeating to himself: “It’s over—it’s over,” as if some monstrous midnight hallucination had been routed by the return of day.
As they approached the school-room door the terrier’s barks came to them through laughing remonstrances.
“She’s giving him his dinner,” Anna whispered, her hand in Darrow’s.
“Don’t forget the gold-fish!” they heard another voice call out.
Darrow halted on the threshold. “Oh—not now!”
“Not now?”
“I mean—she’d rather have you tell her first. I’ll wait for you both downstairs.”