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this refusal, she also forfeits the money settled on her when she married--which Olenski was ready to make
over to her if she returned--why, what the devil do YOU mean, my dear boy, by asking me what I mean?"
Mr. Jackson good-humouredly retorted.
Archer moved toward the mantelpiece and bent over to knock his ashes into the grate.
"I don't know anything of Madame Olenska's private affairs; but I don't need to, to be certain that what you
insinuate--"
"Oh, I don't: it's Lefferts, for one," Mr. Jackson interposed.
"Lefferts--who made love to her and got snubbed for it!" Archer broke out contemptuously.
"Ah--DID he?" snapped the other, as if this were exactly the fact he had been laying a trap for. He still sat
sideways from the fire, so that his hard old gaze held Archer's face as if in a spring of steel.
"Well, well: it's a pity she didn't go back before Beaufort's cropper," he repeated. "If she goes NOW, and if he
fails, it will only confirm the general impression: which isn't by any means peculiar to Lefferts, by the way.
"Oh, she won't go back now: less than ever!" Archer had no sooner said it than he had once more the feeling
that it was exactly what Mr. Jackson had been waiting for.
Information about Project Gutenberg 122
The old gentleman considered him attentively. "That's your opinion, eh? Well, no doubt you know. But
everybody will tell you that the few pennies Medora Manson has left are all in Beaufort's hands; and how the
two women are to keep their heads above water unless he does, I can't imagine. Of course, Madame Olenska
may still soften old Catherine, who's been the most inexorably opposed to her staying; and old Catherine
could make her any allowance she chooses. But we all know that she hates parting with good money; and the
rest of the family have no particular interest in keeping Madame Olenska here."
Archer was burning with unavailing wrath: he was exactly in the state when a man is sure to do something
stupid, knowing all the while that he is doing it.
He saw that Mr. Jackson had been instantly struck by the fact that Madame Olenska's differences with her
grandmother and her other relations were not known to him, and that the old gentleman had drawn his own
conclusions as to the reasons for Archer's exclusion from the family councils. This fact warned Archer to go
warily; but the insinuations about Beaufort made him reckless. He was mindful, however, if not of his own
danger, at least of the fact that Mr. Jackson was under his mother's roof, and consequently his guest. Old New
York scrupulously observed the etiquette of hospitality, and no discussion with a guest was ever allowed to
degenerate into a disagreement.
"Shall we go up and join my mother?" he suggested curtly, as Mr. Jackson's last cone of ashes dropped into
the brass ashtray at his elbow.
On the drive homeward May remained oddly silent; through the darkness, he still felt her enveloped in her
menacing blush. What its menace meant he could not guess: but he was sufficiently warned by the fact that
Madame Olenska's name had evoked it.
They went upstairs, and he turned into the library. She usually followed him; but he heard her passing down
the passage to her bedroom.
"May!" he called out impatiently; and she came back, with a slight glance of surprise at his tone.
"This lamp is smoking again; I should think the servants might see that it's kept properly trimmed," he
grumbled nervously.
"I'm so sorry: it shan't happen again," she answered, in the firm bright tone she had learned from her mother;
and it exasperated Archer to feel that she was already beginning to humour him like a younger Mr. Welland.
She bent over to lower the wick, and as the light struck up on her white shoulders and the clear curves of her
face he thought: "How young she is! For what endless years this life will have to go on!"
He felt, with a kind of horror, his own strong youth and the bounding blood in his veins. "Look here," he said
suddenly, "I may have to go to Washington for a few days--soon; next week perhaps."
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