Things were better when they got to their rooms, where all was quiet, as quiet as a London street can ever be; and where, as they sat down facing each other with nothing to do, the irrepressible controversy broke forth:
‘Your father will never, never hear of it,’ Mrs. Egerton said. ‘Never! Even I myself, Elly—— A convict—how could we let you connect yourself with a convict? And your father and brother both clergymen! Percy would die first. I am sure he would see you die first. And even your father: your father—can be very decided when he takes a thing into his head.’
‘You said so before, Aunt Mary. You said you never would consent; but you talk now as if you would have consented; as if you had consented.’
‘Ah, that was very different!’ Mrs. Egerton said. And in her heart Elly felt that it was different, oh, how different! So different, that even Elly herself felt with a shudder that something was before her quite other than love and happiness. There would still be love, oh, more than ever! but bitter with pain and shame.
It was the afternoon when John came to them. They perceived at once, with their quick, feminine habit of reading the face and its expression, that some change had occurred since the morning. Elly rushed to meet him, when he entered, with both her eager hands held out, but John turned from her, shaking his head with sorrowful self-control. He came and sat down opposite Mrs. Egerton. And there followed a moment in which no one spoke. Mrs. Egerton lifted up her hands, and clasped them together with the natural eloquence of restrained emotion.
‘Oh, Jack,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘oh, my poor boy!’
Pity, tenderness, reluctance, the inexorable impossible were in her looks. It could not be, it could not be; and yet it broke her heart to say so; in such moments there is little need of words.
‘I want to tell you,’ he said. ‘I want to show you——’ He took Mr. Barrett’s paper from his pocket, and spread it out before them: the figures on it were like hieroglyphics in the women’s eyes. ‘This is what I hoped for,’ he said, ‘when I left Edgeley that day—— I don’t know how long ago, it might be a century. My great scheme, that I had all my heart in, is to be carried out. It will bring me a fortune: it is a great work, a work any man might be proud to do. I have got my foot on the ladder, sure. It is not mere hope any longer, but sure, as sure as anything that is mortal can be.’
‘Oh, Jack!’ cried Elly, rushing to his side once more.
‘I am very glad, Jack,’ said Mrs. Egerton, with a trembling voice, ‘very glad, very glad, for you—but, oh, my poor boy——’