"No," I said, but I felt that I was saying it too late, "I don't think anything about it."
"I have been thinking about it, too," said Tedham, as if I had confessed and not denied having an opinion in the matter. "I have been thinking about it ever since I saw you last night, and I don't believe I have slept, for thinking of it. I know how you and Mrs. March feel about it, and I have tried to see it from your point of view, and now I believe I do. I am not going to see my daughter; I am going away."
He stood up, in token of his purpose, and at the same moment my wife entered the room. She must have been hurrying to do so from the moment I left her, for she had on a fresh dress, and her hair had the effect of being suddenly, if very effectively, massed for the interview from the dispersion in which I had lately seen it. She swept me with a glance of reproach, as she went up to Tedham, in the pretence that he had risen to meet her, and gave him her hand. I knew that she divined all that had passed between us, but she said:
"Mr. March has told you that we have seen Mrs. Hasketh, and that you can find your daughter at her house to-morrow evening?"
"Yes, and I have just been telling him that I am not going to see her."
"That is very foolish—very wrong!" my wife began.
"I know you must say so," Tedham replied, with more dignity and force than I could have expected, "and I know how kind you and Mr. March have been. But you must see that I am right—that she is the only one to be considered at all."
"Right! How are you right? Have you been suggesting that, my dear?" demanded my wife, with a gentle despair of me in her voice.
It almost seemed to me that I had, but Tedham came to my rescue most unexpectedly.
"No, Mrs. March, he hasn't said anything of the kind to me; or, if he has, I haven't heard it. But you intimated, yourself, last night, that she might be so situated—"