“Should he? but he doesn’t; he’s a poor weak sentimental creature not strong enough to be either one thing or another, a swindler or an honest man. He naturally takes refuge in compromises. I haven’t known him so long without knowing that. I believe the lawyer’s opinion is his own, it is so like him. A compromise? no! I will have no compromise,” cried Miss Anna, striking her stick upon the floor.
“And we reject it too,” cried Grace—“we will have nothing, nothing! we settled upon all that before we came here. If we had not decided so, we should never have come.”
“Let it go to a jury if you like,” said Miss Anna, paying no attention to this. “I am not afraid. I take the risk of sentiment. Yes, of course, they are a pack of sentimental fools: two pretty girls in deep mourning will get anything out of a British jury. Still I’ll risk it. But nothing, nothing in the world will make me consent to a compromise.”
Grace had risen to her feet, with her usual eagerness of impulse, “Do you not hear me—do you not understand me, Miss Anna? We will take nothing; we will have no compromises, no more talk even, not a word said. We will have nothing, nothing to do with it! We have a right to be heard as well as you——”
“And I think I also have a right to be heard,” cried Geoff—he was calm between the excitement of the others; “I am not without a voice. Whatever you say, justice must be done, and justice suggests this course. Yes, Aunt Anna, whatever you say, I have a right to be heard. It is for our own comfort, without thought of them.”
“I want no such comfort,” she cried. “I gave in to your mother’s nonsense, and allowed them to be asked here. I allowed them to be asked because they were——”
“Aunt Anna! do you wish me to tell them in so many words why you wanted them——?”
“Geoff, Geoff!” cried his mother, in alarm.
The girls paid but little attention to this quarrel as it raged. They did not comprehend even what it was about. “We had better go away as this is not our affair,” Grace said, with a stately little bow. And Milly, too, rose to go with her sister—when the conflict around suddenly ceased, and the two girls, who seemed to have been pushed aside by the other more energetic emotions, suddenly became again the centre of the scene, and the chief persons in it. What was it? only the entrance of old Simmons with a yellow envelope in his hand.
The others stopped short in their conflict. They acknowledged with a little awe the presence of something greater which had come into their midst. They looked on in silence while the girls, clinging together, read their telegram. Then there was a little pause.