“I thought there was something going on,” said Miss Anna, “something underhand, a conspiracy, concealed from me.”
“Conspiracies are not in my way,” Geoffrey said. “Perhaps you would like me to read what they say. It confirms my own opinion—though perhaps my advice would have been different.”
He spread out his papers on the table, and the women round him turned their eyes to him with expressions as different as their characters: his mother proud of the position her boy was assuming, yet a little nervous as to how Anna would take it, and suspicious of the look which she thought she detected him directing towards Milly; Grace a little reserved, holding her head erect, looking at him with an interest which had not much curiosity in it, but a rising impulse of resistance—although she could not tell as yet what it was she was to resist; Milly with milder interest and a gentle admiration of Geoff which was like a shy shadow of his mother’s. But Miss Anna, all alert, turned eagerly towards him as if she would have snatched the papers out of his hands, her dark eyes blazing, her whole figure full of energy and latent wrath, which she was ready to pour out upon him should the lawyers’ opinion go against her own.
“I need not read it word for word,” said Geoff; “I will give it afterwards to my cousin Grace. The lawyers think, after close consideration, that there is—no case——.” (Here there was a movement on the part of Miss Anna and a quick “I told you so.”) “Wait a little,” said Geoffrey, “They say there is scarcely any case to go to a jury; but they say also that if it did go to a jury the strong moral probability and the touching character of all the circumstances might lead to a verdict for the claimants notwithstanding the weakness of the evidence. Law would be against it; but the jury might be for it.”
“I understand that reasoning,” said Miss Anna: “most men are fools, and jurymen are men—therefore it is likely that fools being the judges, the verdict would be preposterous. Is that all your wiseacres have got to say?”
“Not quite,” said Geoff; “the lawyers advise a compromise.”
“A compromise? I object—I object at once. I will not hear of it. Let it go into court. If I am compelled to yield to the sentiment of a dozen British idiots, I must do so; but consent to rob myself, for no reason? oh no, no! I will never do that.”
“Aunt Anna, you are not the only person concerned.”
“I am,” she said; “I have the largest share. I am the eldest. Your mother has never gone against me in her life, and she will not now.”
“Anna,” said Mrs Underwood tremulously, “I always have followed your advice—oh, always, it is quite true; but Geoff, you know—Geoff is a man now; and he has been bred up to the law, and he ought to know better, far better than we do.”