“Listen to me!” she cried. “There’s something more; there’s another chance for me. I must, and will, know what you think of it.”
“Wait a little. Pray wait a little!”
“No! not a moment. Is there any hope in appealing to the lawyer whom Mr. Linley has employed? Let me go back with you to London. I will persuade him to exert his influence—I will go down on my knees to him—I will never leave him till I have won him over to my side—I will take Kitty with me; he shall see us both, and pity us, and help us!”
“Hopeless. Quite hopeless, Mrs. Linley.”
“Oh, don’t say that!”
“My dear lady, my poor dear lady, I must say it. The man you are talking of is the last man in the world to be influenced as you suppose. He is notoriously a lawyer, and nothing but a lawyer. If you tried to move him to pity you, he would say, ‘Madam, I am doing my duty to my client’; and he would ring his bell and have you shown out. Yes! even if he saw you crushed and crying at his feet.”
Mrs. Presty interfered for the first time.
“In your place, Catherine,” she said, “I would put my foot down on that man and crush him. Consent to the Divorce, and you may do it.”
Mrs. Linley lay prostrate in her chair. The excitement which had sustained her thus far seemed to have sunk with the sinking of her last hope. Pale, exhausted, yielding to hard necessity, she looked up when her mother said, “Consent to the Divorce,” and answered, “I have consented.”
“And trust me,” Mr. Sarrazin said fervently, “to see that Justice is done, and to protect you in the meanwhile.”