Mrs. Rossall raised her eyebrows a little, and kept her air of pained musing.
'Well, what is to be done?' resumed her brother, always impatient of mere negatives. 'He has delivered a sort of ultimatum. In the event of this proposal—as to Miss Hood's return—being rejected, he marries at once.'
'And then goes back to Balliol?'
'No, simply abandons his career.'
Mrs. Rossall smiled. It was not in woman's nature to be uninterested by decision such as this.
'Do you despair of influencing him?' she asked.
'Entirely. He will not hear of her taking another place in the interval, and it seems there are difficulties in the way of her remaining at home. Of course I see very well the objections on the surface to her coming back—'
'The objections are not on the surface at all, they are fundamental. You are probably not in a position to see the ease as I do. Such a state of things would be ludicrous; we should all be playing parts in a farce. He cannot have made such a proposal to her; she would have shown him at once its absurdity.'
'But the fact of the matter is that she acceded to it,' said Mr. Athel, with a certain triumph over female infallibility.
'Then I think worse of her than I did, that's all.'