Mrs. Meredith Vyner knew perfectly well the effect to be produced by her apparently careless phrases, and played upon her husband's mind with a certainty of touch highly creditable to her skill.
"I am surprised, my dear Mary, to hear you talk so. For granted, indeed! No; it shall not be for granted; it shall not be at all. I will be master in my own house. I have already submitted too much to my daughters; and they shall find I will do so no more. A pretty thing, indeed, to brave her father, to bring a slur upon her name by running away with a penniless adventurer: a man I don't like; a mere superficial dabbler, who pretends to understand 'Horace,' and is quite at sea with respect to the Horatian metres. He'll never do anything; never be anything. And yet he expects that he has only to write me a whining letter, and all will be forgotten. He doesn't think it possible I can refuse. No, no; takes my pardon for granted. But it is not granted. It shall not be."
"This will soon blow over, I'm not at all afraid for my dear Blanche. You will not be able to hold out long."
"There is your mistake."
"We shall see, we shall see," said she, with a tone of most expressive certainty of the truth of what she said, and left the room.
Meredith Vyner was seldom angry; but the provoking confidence of his wife, in what he chose to consider her opinion of his weakness, made him furious against the cause thereof—the offending Cecil.
From what impulses spring human actions! Here is a man delighted by the opportunity afforded him of forgiving his offending child, and ready to clasp her to his bosom. That is the natural instinct of his heart. His wife comes; and, by pretending to urge the very act he is about to perform, by choosing to assume it as a settled thing, and insinuating thereby, that, from his known weakness, everybody must also assume it, she stifles the parental feeling, awakens his miserable vanity, and makes him exhibit his weakness by the very action which he intends as a proof of his fortitude and decision.
Resolved to show how mistaken those were who fancied that he was to be led by the nose, he sat down, and wrote this brief, and, as he thought, crushing reply:—
"WYTTON HALL, 10th Nov. 1840.
"SIR,