dear, am I perfectly hideous?" she asked gaily, launching out one
hand in search of the folds of muslin on her inaccessible bosom. "My
daughters tell me it doesn't matter at my age--as if hideousness didn't
matter all the more the harder it gets to conceal!"
"My dear, you're handsomer than ever!" Archer rejoined in the same
tone; and she threw back her head and laughed.
"Ah, but not as handsome as Ellen!" she jerked out, twinkling at him
maliciously; and before he could answer she added: "Was she so awfully
handsome the day you drove her up from the ferry?"
He laughed, and she continued: "Was it because you told her so that
she had to put you out on the way? In my youth young men didn't desert
pretty women unless they were made to!" She gave another chuckle, and
interrupted it to say almost querulously: "It's a pity she didn't
marry you; I always told her so. It would have spared me all this
worry. But who ever thought of sparing their grandmother worry?"
Archer wondered if her illness had blurred her faculties; but suddenly
she broke out: "Well, it's settled, anyhow: she's going to stay with
me, whatever the rest of the family say! She hadn't been here five
minutes before I'd have gone down on my knees to keep her--if only, for
the last twenty years, I'd been able to see where the floor was!"
Archer listened in silence, and she went on: "They'd talked me over,
as no doubt you know: persuaded me, Lovell, and Letterblair, and
Augusta Welland, and all the rest of them, that I must hold out and cut
off her allowance, till she was made to see that it was her duty to go
back to Olenski. They thought they'd convinced me when the secretary,
or whatever he was, came out with the last proposals: handsome
proposals I confess they were. After all, marriage is marriage, and
money's money--both useful things in their way ... and I didn't know
what to answer--" She broke off and drew a long breath, as if speaking
had become an effort. "But the minute I laid eyes on her, I said:
'You sweet bird, you! Shut you up in that cage again? Never!' And
now it's settled that she's to stay here and nurse her Granny as long
as there's a Granny to nurse. It's not a gay prospect, but she doesn't
mind; and of course I've told Letterblair that she's to be given her
proper allowance."
The young man heard her with veins aglow; but in his confusion of mind
he hardly knew whether her news brought joy or pain. He had so
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