“Well? It’s coming, old girl, coming fast, and he’s mercifully trying to soften the blow to us.”
Georgia looked round with a shiver. The shabby bungalow with its makeshift furniture was the outward and visible sign of the life-work which she and her husband had inherited from her father, and it was to be taken from them by the action of the man who hoped that his arbitrary decree would be no obstacle to their continuing to regard him as a friend.
“And what I think is,” Dick went on, “that they had better be married as soon as possible, before Burgrave goes down to the river again, and the blow falls.”
“But, Dick,” Georgia almost screamed, “you’re giving her no time to repent.”
“Repent? I’m not proposing to kill her. Surely it would be better for her to be married from this house than from a Bombay hotel? Besides, we should have no further anxiety about her——”
“No further anxiety? Dick, if she marries him I shall never know another happy moment. She doesn’t care a straw for him—it’s a kind of fascination, that’s all, a sort of deadly terror. I can’t tell you what it’s been like all day. She couldn’t bear me to leave them alone a moment, and there was he beaming at her, and not seeing it a bit. He thinks it’s all right for her to be shy and tongue-tied, and not dare to meet his eye—the pompous idiot! Mab shy—and with a man! She’s miserable—in fear of her life.”
“No, no, Georgie, that’s a little too thick. Mab is not a school-girl, to let herself be coerced into an engagement, and it won’t do to stir her up to break it off. You mustn’t go and abuse him to her. Be satisfied with relieving your feelings to me.”
“Now, Dick, is it likely? Am I the person to give her an extra reason for sticking to him? If I abused him she would feel bound to defend him, and might even end by caring for him. I can’t pretend to congratulate her on her choice, but she shall have every facility for seeing as much of him as she can possibly want.”
“Vengeful creature!”
“No, that’s not it. I have no patience with her.”