finitely decided on the course he meant to pursue that for the moment
he could not readjust his thoughts. But gradually there stole over him
the delicious sense of difficulties deferred and opportunities
miraculously provided. If Ellen had consented to come and live with
her grandmother it must surely be because she had recognised the
impossibility of giving him up. This was her answer to his final
appeal of the other day: if she would not take the extreme step he had
urged, she had at last yielded to half-measures. He sank back into the
thought with the involuntary relief of a man who has been ready to risk
everything, and suddenly tastes the dangerous sweetness of security.

"She couldn't have gone back--it was impossible!" he exclaimed.

"Ah, my dear, I always knew you were on her side; and that's why I sent
for you today, and why I said to your pretty wife, when she proposed to
come with you: 'No, my dear, I'm pining to see Newland, and I don't
want anybody to share our transports.' For you see, my dear--" she
drew her head back as far as its tethering chins permitted, and looked
him full in the eyes--"you see, we shall have a fight yet. The family
don't want her here, and they'll say it's because I've been ill,
because I'm a weak old woman, that she's persuaded me. I'm not well
enough yet to fight them one by one, and you've got to do it for me."

"I?" he stammered.

"You. Why not?" she jerked back at him, her round eyes suddenly as
sharp as pen-knives. Her hand fluttered from its chair-arm and lit on
his with a clutch of little pale nails like bird-claws. "Why not?" she
searchingly repeated.

Archer, under the exposure of her gaze, had recovered his
self-possession.

"Oh, I don't count--I'm too insignificant."

"Well, you're Letterblair's partner, ain't you? You've got to get at
them through Letterblair. Unless you've got a reason," she insisted.

"Oh, my dear, I back you to hold your own against them all without my
help; but you shall have it if you need it," he reassured her.

"Then we're safe!" she sighed; and smiling on him with all her ancient
cunning she added, as she settled her head among the cushions: "I
always knew you'd back us up, because they never quote you when they
talk about its being her duty to go home."

He winced a little at her terrifying perspicacity, and longed to ask:
"And May--do they quote her?" But he judged it safer to turn the
question.

"And Madame Olenska?