This simply reduced me to asking myself if the
girl had on the spot improvised an engagement--vamped up an old one
or dashed off a new--in order to arrive at the satisfaction she
desired. She must have had resources of which I was destitute, but
she made her case slightly more intelligible by returning
presently: "What the state of things has been is that we felt of
course bound to do nothing in mamma's lifetime."
"But now you think you'll just dispense with mamma's consent?"
"Ah it mayn't come to that!" I wondered what it might come to, and
she went on: "Poor dear, she may swallow the dose. In fact, you
know," she added with a laugh, "she really MUST!"--a proposition of
which, on behalf of every one concerned, I fully acknowledged the
force.
CHAPTER VIII.
Nothing more vexatious had ever happened to me than to become aware
before Corvick's arrival in England that I shouldn't be there to
put him through. I found myself abruptly called to Germany by the
alarming illness of my younger brother, who, against my advice, had
gone to Munich to study, at the feet indeed of a great master, the
art of portraiture in oils. The near relative who made him an
allowance had threatened to withdraw it if he should, under
specious pretexts, turn for superior truth to Paris--Paris being
somehow, for a Cheltenham aunt, the school of evil, the abyss.
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