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Updated: May 23, 2025
Milroy's eyes questioned her daughter's face as they had never questioned it yet. There was something under the surface, evidently something which it might be of vital importance to her own purpose to discover which had not risen into view. She went on probing her way deeper and deeper into Neelie's mind, with a warmer and warmer interest in Neelie's secret.
Poor Neelie's natural feeling of irritation under the disappointment which Allan's awkwardness had inflicted on her was now exasperated into silent and settled resentment by her own keen sense of humiliation and defeat. The major had relapsed into his habitually dreamy, absent manner; his mind was turning monotonously with the wheels of his clock.
Neelie's head dropped again. The burning color that she was hiding by hiding her face showed itself on her neck. Her mother saw it, and gave her time. "Tell me," reiterated Mrs. Milroy, more gently, "why do you hate her?" The answer came reluctantly, a word at a time, in fragments. "Because she is trying " "Trying what?" "Trying to make somebody who is much " "Much what?"
She has been left in the dark from that time to this, not knowing how she might have been misrepresented by Miss Gwilt, or what falsehoods you might have been led to believe of her. At my age and in my profession, I don't profess to have any extraordinary softness of heart. But I do think, Mr. Armadale, that Miss Neelie's position deserves our sympathy."
Trifling as it was, Neelie's reference to the relations between the major and Miss Gwilt had roused her mother's ready jealousy. The restraints which Mrs. Milroy had laid on herself thus far vanished in a moment vanished even in the presence of a girl of sixteen, and that girl her own child! "Wait here!" she said, eagerly. "You have come to the right place and the right person.
"I have told you, mamma." "You have not! You have made an excuse; I see it in your face. Come! what is it?" Neelie's resolution gave way before her mother's. She looked aside uneasily at the things in the tray. "I have been vexed," she said, with an effort; "and I didn't want to stop in the breakfast-room. I wanted to come up here, and to speak to you." "Vexed? Who has vexed you?
"I am betraying Miss Neelie's secret, in Miss Neelie's own interest. Let us go back to that cautious question I put to her. She found some little difficulty in answering it, for the reply involved her in a narrative of the parting interview between her governess and herself. This is the substance of it. She said, 'Your mother has declined to allow me to take leave of her.
"Your father has reasons of his own for hearing nothing that you can say, or that anybody can say, against Miss Gwilt." Many girls at Neelie's age would have failed to see the meaning hidden under those words. It was the daughter's misfortune, in this instance, to have had experience enough of the mother to understand her. Neelie started back from the bedside, with her face in a glow.
At the farewell moment of the interview on Saturday, Neelie's mind had suddenly precipitated itself into the future; and she had utterly confounded Allan by inquiring whether the contemplated elopement was an offense punishable by the Law?
He appears to have hesitated, and to have maintained his own unfavorable opinion of Miss Neelie's lover for some little time. Though he firmly refused to allow of any marriage engagement at present, he consented to overlook the clandestine meetings in the park, and to put Armadale's fitness to become his son-in-law to the test, on certain conditions.
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