“I suppose I must go down there,” he said to himself, keeping a meditative watch on the postscript, as if it possessed the capability of slipping away and deceiving him.  “Does she mean that Cornelia sees too much of this man Barrett? or, what does she mean?” And now he saw meanings in the simple passages, and none at all in the intricate ones; and the double-meanings were monsters that ate one another up till nothing remained of them.  In the end, however, he made a wrathful guess and came to a resolution, which brought him to the door of the house next day at noon.  He took some pains in noting the exact spot where he had last seen Emilia half in moonlight, and then dismissed her image peremptorily.  The house was apparently empty.  Gainsford, the footman, gave information that he thought the ladies were upstairs, but did not volunteer to send a maid to them.  He stood in deferential footman’s attitude, with the aspect of a dog who would laugh if he could, but being a footman out of his natural element, cannot.

“Here’s a specimen of the new plan of treating servants!” thought Wilfrid, turning away.  “To act a farce for their benefit!  That fellow will explode when he gets downstairs.  I see how it is.  This woman, Chump, is making them behave like schoolgirls.”

He conceived the idea sharply, and forthwith, without any preparation, he was ready to treat these high-aspiring ladies like schoolgirls.  Nor was there a lack of justification; for when they came down to his shouts in the passage, they hushed, and held a finger aloft, and looked altogether so unlike what they aimed at being, that Wilfrid’s sense of mastery became almost contempt.

“I know perfectly what you have to tell me,” he said.  “Mrs. Chump is here, you have quarrelled with her, and she has shut her door, and you have shut yours.  It’s quite intelligible and full of dignity.  I really can’t smother my voice in consequence.”

He laughed with unnecessary abandonment.  The sensitive young women wanted no other schooling to recover themselves.  In a moment they were seen leaning back and contemplating him amusedly, as if he had been the comic spectacle, and were laughing for a wager.  There are few things so sour as the swallowing of one’s own forced laugh.  Wilfrid got it down, and commenced a lecture to fill the awkward pause.  His sisters maintained the opera-stall posture of languid attention, contesting his phrases simply with their eyebrows, and smiling.  He was no match for them while they chose to be silent:  and indeed if the business of life were conducted in dumb show, women would beat men hollow.  They posture admirably.  In dumb show they are equally good for attack and defence.  But this is not the case in speech.  So, when Arabella explained that their hope was to see Mrs. Chump go that day, owing to the rigorous exclusion of all amusement and the outer world from the house, Wilfrid regained his superior footing and made his lecture tell.  In the middle of it, there rang a cry from the doorway that astonished even him, it was so powerfully Irish.