Her face was suddenly hard again as she replied. “I don’t think there’s one chance in a million,” she said. “The Jervaise prestige couldn’t stand such relations as us, living at their very doors. Besides, I know I’ve upset that horrid Jervaise man. He’ll be revengeful. He’s so weak, and that sort are always vindictive. He’ll be mean and spiteful. Oh! no, it’s one of two things, either Arthur will have to go back to Canada without Brenda, or we’ll all have to go together.”
Her tone and attitude convinced me. If I had been able to consider the case logically and without prejudice, I should probably have scorned this presentation of rigid alternatives as the invention of a romantic mind; I might have recognised in it the familiar device of the dramatist. But I had so far surrendered myself to the charm of Anne’s individuality that I accepted her statement without the least shadow of criticism. It was the search to find some mechanical means of influencing the Jervaises’ decision that reminded me of Arthur Banks’s hint of an advantage that he might use in a last emergency.
“But your brother told me last night,” I said, “that there was some—‘pull’ or other he had, that might make a difference if it came to desperate measures.”
“He didn’t tell you what it was?” she asked, and I knew at once that she was, after all, in her brother’s confidence.
“No, he gave me no idea,” I replied.
“He couldn’t ever use that,” she said decidedly. “He told me about it this morning, before he went up to the Hall, and I—”
“Dissuaded him?” I suggested, as she paused.
“No! He saw it, himself,” she explained.
“It wasn’t like Arthur—to think of such a thing, even—at ordinary times. But after his quarrel with Brenda on the hill—if you could call it a quarrel, when, so far as I can make out, Arthur never said a word the whole time—after that, and Brenda being so eager to face them all out, this morning; he got a little beyond himself.”
“Does Brenda know about this—pull?” I asked.