"You can get his letter and look at it, if you doubt your mother's word on Sunday." This was not an admission of fibs on week-days; it referred to the intensification of unfiliality as a Sabbath vice. The speaker closed her eyes and began saying nothing about the subject again, in fulfilment of her manifesto.
Marianne ran her eyes over the scanty fringe of letters stuck in the mirror-frame over the chimney-piece. Mr. Tillingfleet's business handwriting was soon found. "He does say no such thing," said she, after reading it to herself. "What he says is absolutely and entirely different."
"I am corrected. When you are quiet once more, perhaps you will kindly tell me what he says?"
"Grandmamma, I tell you plainly it is no use trying to make me out in a temper, because I'm not...."
"Go on. I am accustomed to being snapped at."
"I shall not go on if you talk like that."
"I have no wish to hear the letter again. Don't read it if you don't want to. I know perfectly well what's in it." The venerable lady then murmured to herself, most offensively, "Three little Liver Pills." It was one of her practices to sketch correctives for controversial opponents, the doses increasing in proportion to the degree of diversity of opinion.
Marianne, armed with a combative immobility of face and monotony of accent, read aloud from Mr. Tillingfleet's letter. "'The retrospective action of the measure now before Parliament will, if carried, seriously affect the relations of Sir Alfred Challis and your daughter. It will undoubtedly determine the technical legitimacy of their children, and give their de facto father a legal right to their guardianship.' There!" says Marianne in conclusion, replacing the letter in the looking-glass.
But her mother rallies her forces with asperity against the assumptions of this monosyllable, saying enigmatically that she is "not going to be 'there'd.'" It is ridiculous, she says, to pretend that she said that Mr. Tillingfleet said there was anything in the Bill to compel anyone to do anything. But, for all that, Marianne would have to live with her husband again, or go without her children.
Marianne walked up and down the room over this, chafing. She couldn't believe such disgraceful injustice was possible. Besides, if the Bill passed ever so, Titus would never have the meanness to take her children from her. To think that, all this year past, he could have married that girl at any moment, and then to have a right to his children!