"Do as you please. It would be a thousand pities to worry your uncle. Let all the worry fall on me."
He took up a book and threw himself back in his chair as if he had dismissed the subject.
"I don't know what to do!" exclaimed Castalia, with fretful helplessness. At length, after sitting silent for some time twisting her handkerchief backwards and forwards in her fingers, she got up and crossed the room to her husband's chair.
"Ancram!" she said softly.
"Eh? I beg your pardon!" looking up with an appearance of great abstraction, as if the perusal of his book had absorbed all his attention.
"I wish to do what will please you. I only care to please you in the world. But—can't you explain to me a little better why I must write to Uncle Val?"
Explain! Of course he would! He desired nothing better. He had brought her to a point at which encouragement was needed, not coldness. And with the singular flexibility that belonged to him, he was able immediately to plunge into an animated statement of his present situation, which sufficed to persuade his hearer that no course of conduct could be so desirable, so prudent—nay, so praiseworthy, as the course he had suggested.
To be sure the details were vague, but the general impression was vivid enough. If Algernon's pictures were a little inaccurate in drawing, they were at least always admirably coloured. And the general impression was this: that there never had been a person of such brilliant abilities and charming qualities as Algernon Ancram Errington so unjustly consigned to obscurity and poverty. And no contributions to his comfort, luxury, or well-being were too much to expect and claim from the world in general, and his wife's relations in particular. Common honesty—common decency almost—would compel Lord Seely to make all the amends in his power for having placed Algernon in the Whitford Post-office. And there was an insinuation very skilfully and delicately mixed with all the seemingly unstudied and spontaneous outpourings of Algy's conjugal confidence—an insinuation which affected the flavour of the whole, as an accomplished cook will contrive to mingle garlic in a ragoût, never coarsely obtrusive, and yet distinctly perceptible—to the effect that the hand of Miss Castalia Kilfinane had been somewhat officiously thrust upon her charming husband; and that the family owed him no little gratitude for having been kind enough to accept it.
Poor Castalia had an uneasy feeling, at the end of his fluent discourse, that Algernon had been a victim to her great relations, and, in some dim way, to herself. But the garlic was so admirably blended with the whole mass, that it was impossible for her to pick it out, or resent it, or do anything but declare her willingness to help her husband by any means in her power.
"Why, my dear girl, it is as much for your sake as for mine! And as to the necessity for it, I must tell you what Minnie Bodkin said to me to-day. Minnie is an excellent creature, full of friendly feeling—a little too conceited and fond of lecturing" (Castalia's face brightened); "but much must be excused to an afflicted invalid, who never meets her fellow-creatures on equal terms."