‘You are put out,’ she said; ‘something has happened. Oh, tell me—something about the boys? Oswald!’
‘Nothing of the sort,’ he said. ‘Don’t think it for a moment! The boys are perfectly well, I hope. I was going to ask you an odd sort of question, though,’ he added, with an awkward smile, rushing into the middle of the subject. ‘Did it never occur to you that you would be the better for having someone to help you with the boys?’
Now, there could not have been a more foolish question—for until a very short time back the boys’ father had been in existence—and since then, there had been no time for the widow to take any such step. She looked at him with much surprise. ‘Someone to help me? Whom could I have to help me? Their poor dear father was too far away!’
‘Ah! I forgot their father,’ said Mr. Beresford, with naïve innocence, and then there was a pause. He did not know how to begin again after that very evident downfall. ‘I mean, however, as a general question,’ he added, ‘what do you think? Should you approve of a woman in your own position—marrying, for instance—for her children’s sake?’
‘That is a curious question,’ she said, with a little laugh; but the surprise brought the colour into her face. ‘I suppose it would depend on the woman. But I don’t know,’ she added, after a moment, ‘how a woman could put her children into any stranger’s—any other man’s hands.’
‘Ah, a stranger! perhaps I did not mean a stranger.’
‘I don’t think you know what you meant,’ she said, with a smile; but there was some terror in her eyes. She thought she knew what was coming. She was like him in her own sentiments, and still more like him in her speculations about himself. She had been brought to believe that he loved and wanted to marry her. And, if it could not be otherwise, she felt that she must consent; but she did not wish it any more than he did. However, while he thought the best policy was to find out what ought to be done at once, she was all for putting off, avoiding the consideration, trusting in something that might turn up. Mr. Beresford, however, had wound himself up to this interview, and was not to be put off.
‘Between people of our sober years such questions may be discussed—may they not?’ he said. ‘I wonder what you think really? There is nothing I so much wish to know—not the conventional things that everybody says—but what you think. You have been my other conscience for so long,’ he added, jesuitically, in order to conceal the cunning with which he was approaching the subject—asking for her opinion without specifying the subject on which he wanted it.
But she saw through him, with a little amusement at the artifice employed. He wanted to know what she thought without asking her. Fortunately, the being asked was the thing she wanted to avoid. But, just when they had got to this critical point, Edward came upstairs. He was not friendly, as he had been to his mother’s friend; he came in with the gloom upon his face, and a look of weariness. Mr. Beresford heard the door open with great impatience of the newcomer, whoever it might be. Nothing could be more inopportune. He wished Edward in Calcutta or wherever else it might be best for him to be on the other side of the seas. But, as for Mrs. Meredith, her attention fled on the moment to her boy. She forgot her friend and his questioning, and even the delicate position which she had realised, and the gravity of the relations which might ensue. All this went out of her mind in comparison with Edward’s fatigued look. She got up and went to him, putting her hand very tenderly upon his shoulder.
‘You have been working too long, dear. Oh, Edward, don’t be so anxious to get away from me! You are working as if this was your dearest wish in the world.’