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their drive home from Mrs. Manson Mingotts on the day of the Archery Meeting: Perhaps, after all, Ellen would be happier with her husband. Even in the tumult of new discoveries Archer remembered his indignant exclamation, and the fact that since then his wife had never named Madame Olenska to him. Her careless allusion had no doubt been the straw held up to see which way the wind blew; the result had been reported to the family, and thereafter Archer had been tacitly omitted from their counsels. He admired the tribal discipline which made May bow to this decision. She would not have done so, he knew, had her conscience protested; but she probably shared the family view that Madame Olenska would be better off as an unhappy wife than as a separated one, and that there was no use in discussing the case with Newland, who had an awkward way of suddenly not seeming to take the most fundamental things for granted. Archer looked up and met his visitors anxious gaze. Dont you know, Monsieuris it possible you dont knowthat the family begin to doubt if they have the right to advise the Countess to refuse her husbands last proposals? The proposals you brought? The proposals I brought. It was on Archers lips to exclaim that whatever he knew or did not know was no concern of M. Rivières; but something in the humble and yet courageous tenacity of M. Rivières gaze made him reject this conclusion, and he met the young mans question with another. What is your object in speaking to me of this? He had not to wait a moment for the answer. To beg you, Monsieurto beg you with all the force Im capable ofnot to let her go back.Oh, dont let her! M. Rivière exclaimed. Archer looked at him with increasing astonishment. There was no mistaking the sincerity of his distress or the strength of his determination: he had evidently resolved to let everything go by the board but the supreme need of thus putting himself on record. Archer considered. May I ask, he said at length, if this is the line you took with the Countess Olenska? M. Rivière reddened, but his eyes did not falter. No, Monsieur: I accepted my mission in good faith. I really believedfor reasons I need not trouble you withthat it would be better for Madame Olenska to recover her situation, her fortune, the social consideration that her husbands standing gives her. So I supposed: you could hardly have accepted such a mission otherwise. I should not have accepted it. Well, then? Archer paused again, and their eyes met in another protracted scrutiny. Ah, Monsieur, after I had seen her, after I had listened to her, I knew she was better off here. You knew? Monsieur, I discharged my mission faithfully: I put the Counts arguments, I stated his offers, without adding any comment of my own. The Countess was good enough to listen patiently; she carried her goodness so far as to see me twice; she considered impartially all I had come to say. And it was in the course of these two talks that I changed my mind, that I came to see things differently. May I ask what led to this change? Simply seeing the change in her, M. Rivière replied. |
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