I gave a quick cry at this, which, in its violence, made my visitor turn pale. “How very awful!”
“Awful?”
“Why, to have anything to do with such an idea oneself.”
“I'm sure you needn't!” Mrs. Mulville gave a slight toss of her head.
“He isn't good enough!” I went on; to which she responded with an ejaculation almost as lively as mine had been. This made me, with genuine, immediate horror, exclaim: “You haven't influenced her, I hope!” and my emphasis brought back the blood with a rush to poor Adelaide's face. She declared while she blushed (for I had frightened her again), that she had never influenced anybody and that the girl had only seen and heard and judged for herself. He had influenced her, if I would, as he did everyone who had a soul: that word, as we knew, even expressed feebly the power of the things he said to haunt the mind. How could she, Adelaide, help it if Miss Anvoy's mind was haunted? I demanded with a groan what right a pretty girl engaged to a rising M.P. had to have a mind; but the only explanation my bewildered friend could give me was that she was so clever. She regarded Mr. Saltram naturally as a tremendous force for good. She was intelligent enough to understand him and generous enough to admire.
“She's many things enough, but is she, among them, rich enough?” I demanded. “Rich enough, I mean, to sacrifice such a lot of good money?”
“That's for herself to judge. Besides, it's not her own money; she doesn't in the least consider it so.”
“And Gravener does, if not his own: and that's the whole difficulty?”
“The difficulty that brought her back, yes: she had absolutely to see her poor aunt's solicitor. It's clear that by Lady Coxon's will she may have the money, but it's still clearer to her conscience that the original condition, definite, intensely implied on her uncle's part, is attached to the use of it. She can only take one view of it. It's for the Endowment or it's for nothing.”
“The Endowment is a conception superficially sublime but fundamentally ridiculous.”