Archer's eyes.

M. Riviere paled to his normal hue: paler than that his complexion
could hardly turn.

"Why the devil," Archer explosively continued, "should you have
thought--since I suppose you're appealing to me on the ground of my
relationship to Madame Olenska--that I should take a view contrary to
the rest of her family?"

The change of expression in M. Riviere's face was for a time his only
answer. His look passed from timidity to absolute distress: for a
young man of his usually resourceful mien it would have been difficult
to appear more disarmed and defenceless. "Oh, Monsieur--"

"I can't imagine," Archer continued, "why you should have come to me
when there are others so much nearer to the Countess; still less why
you thought I should be more accessible to the arguments I suppose you
were sent over with."

M. Riviere took this onslaught with a disconcerting humility. "The
arguments I want to present to you, Monsieur, are my own and not those
I was sent over with."

"Then I see still less reason for listening to them."

M. Riviere again looked into his hat, as if considering whether these
last words were not a sufficiently broad hint to put it on and be gone.
Then he spoke with sudden decision. "Monsieur--will you tell me one
thing? Is it my right to be here that you question? Or do you perhaps
believe the whole matter to be already closed?"

His quiet insistence made Archer feel the clumsiness of his own
bluster. M. Riviere had succeeded in imposing himself: Archer,
reddening slightly, dropped into his chair again, and signed to the
young man to be seated.

"I beg your pardon: but why isn't the matter closed?"

M. Riviere gazed back at him with anguish. "You do, then, agree with
the rest of the family that, in face of the new proposals I have
brought, it is hardly possible for Madame Olenska not to return to her
husband?"

"Good God!" Archer exclaimed; and his visitor gave out a low murmur of
confirmation.

"Before seeing her, I saw--at Count Olenski's request--Mr. Lovell
Mingott, with whom I had several talks before going to Boston. I
understand that he represents his mother's view; and that Mrs. Manson
Mingott's influence is great throughout her family."

Archer sat silent, with the sense of clinging to the edge of a sliding
precipice. The discovery that he had been excluded from a share in
these negotiations, and even from the knowledge that they were on foot,
caused him a sur