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 definitely 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.