‘What is it?’ he asked with small ceremony, as soon as the door closed behind him.
She mastered her voice, and spoke with a sweet clearness of advocacy which should have moved his heart to proud and noble obeisance. Mutimer was not very accessible to such emotions.
‘It’s like the fellow’s impertinence,’ he said, ‘to send his children to you. I’m rather surprised you let them stay after what I had told you. Certainly I shall not overlook it. The thing’s finished I it’s no good talking about it.’
The fear had passed, but the coldness about her heart was more deadly. For a moment it seemed as if she could not bring herself to utter another word; she drew apart, she could not raise her face, which was beautiful in marble pain. But there came a rush of such hot anguish as compelled her to speak again. Something more than the fate of that poor family was at stake. Is not the quality of mercy indispensable to true nobleness? Had she voiced her very thought, Adela would have implored him to exalt himself in her eyes, to do a good deed which cost him some little effort over himself. For she divined with cruel certainty that it was not the principle that made him unyielding.
‘Richard, are you sure that the man has offended before?’
‘Oh, of course he has. I’ve no doubt of it. I remember feeling uncertain when I admitted him first of all. I didn’t like his look.’
‘But you have not really had to complain of him before. Your suspicions may be groundless. And he has a good wife, I feel sure of that. The children are very clean and nicely dressed. She will help him to avoid drink in future. It is impossible for him to fail again, now that he knows how dreadful the results will be to his wife and his little girls.’
‘Pooh! What does he care about them? If I begin letting men off in that way, I shall be laughed at. There’s an end of my authority. Don’t bother your head about them. I must go and get ready for dinner.’
An end of my authority. Yes, was it not the intelligence of her maiden heart returning to her? She had no pang from the mere refusal of a request of hers; Richard had never affected tenderness—not what she understood as tenderness—and she did not expect it of him. The union between them had another basis. But the understanding of his motives was so terribly distinct in her! It had come all at once; it was like the exposure of something dreadful by the sudden raising of a veil. And had she not known what the veil covered? Yet for the poor people’s sake, for his own sake, she must try the woman’s argument.
‘Do you refuse me, Richard? I will be guarantee for him. I promise you he shall not offend again. He shall apologise humbly to you for his—his words. You won’t really refuse me?’