“Go back at once—and bear this in mind as you go. If you can find out any likely way of parting these two young people (in their own best interests), depend on one thing—if I can help you, I will. I’m as fond of Amelius as you are. Ask him if I haven’t done my best to keep him away from my niece. Ask him if I haven’t expressed my opinion, that she’s not the right wife for him. Come and see me again as soon as you like. I’m fond of Americans. Good morning.”
Rufus attempted to express his sense of gratitude, in his own briefly eloquent way. He was not allowed a hearing. With one and the same action, Mrs. Farnaby patted him on the shoulder, and pushed him out of the room.
“If that woman was an American citizen,” Rufus reflected, on his way through the streets, “she’d be the first female President of the United States!” His admiration of Mrs. Farnaby’s energy and resolution, expressed in these strong terms, acknowledged but one limit. Highly as he approved of her, there was nevertheless an unfathomable something in the woman’s eyes that disturbed and daunted him.
CHAPTER 3
Rufus found his friend at the lodgings, prostrate on the sofa, smoking furiously. Before a word had passed between them, it was plain to the New Englander that something had gone wrong.
“Well,” he asked; “and what does Farnaby say?”
“Damn Farnaby!”
Rufus was secretly conscious of an immense sense of relief. “I call that a stiff way of putting it,” he quietly remarked; “but the meaning’s clear. Farnaby has said No.”
Amelius jumped off the sofa, and planted himself defiantly on the hearthrug.