The day after we left for Polesdean Lodge Sir Percival wrote, it seems, to Mr. Fairlie, to say that the necessary repairs and alterations in his house in Hampshire would occupy a much longer time in completion than he had originally anticipated.  The proper estimates were to be submitted to him as soon as possible, and it would greatly facilitate his entering into definite arrangements with the workpeople, if he could be informed of the exact period at which the wedding ceremony might be expected to take place.  He could then make all his calculations in reference to time, besides writing the necessary apologies to friends who had been engaged to visit him that winter, and who could not, of course, be received when the house was in the hands of the workmen.

To this letter Mr. Fairlie had replied by requesting Sir Percival himself to suggest a day for the marriage, subject to Miss Fairlie’s approval, which her guardian willingly undertook to do his best to obtain.  Sir Percival wrote back by the next post, and proposed (in accordance with his own views and wishes from the first?) the latter part of December—­perhaps the twenty-second, or twenty-fourth, or any other day that the lady and her guardian might prefer.  The lady not being at hand to speak for herself, her guardian had decided, in her absence, on the earliest day mentioned—­the twenty-second of December, and had written to recall us to Limmeridge in consequence.

After explaining these particulars to me at a private interview yesterday, Mr. Fairlie suggested, in his most amiable manner, that I should open the necessary negotiations to-day.  Feeling that resistance was useless, unless I could first obtain Laura’s authority to make it, I consented to speak to her, but declared, at the same time, that I would on no consideration undertake to gain her consent to Sir Percival’s wishes.  Mr. Fairlie complimented me on my “excellent conscience,” much as he would have complimented me, if he had been out walking, on my “excellent constitution,” and seemed perfectly satisfied, so far, with having simply shifted one more family responsibility from his own shoulders to mine.

This morning I spoke to Laura as I had promised.  The composure—­I may almost say, the insensibility—­which she has so strangely and so resolutely maintained ever since Sir Percival left us, was not proof against the shock of the news I had to tell her.  She turned pale and trembled violently.

“Not so soon!” she pleaded.  “Oh, Marian, not so soon!”

The slightest hint she could give was enough for me.  I rose to leave the room, and fight her battle for her at once with Mr. Fairlie.

Just as my hand was on the door, she caught fast hold of my dress and stopped me.

“Let me go!” I said.  “My tongue burns to tell your uncle that he and Sir Percival are not to have it all their own way.”

She sighed bitterly, and still held my dress.