"I'll do anything to help her!" cried Allan, impulsively. "You don't know, Mr. Pedgift, what reason I have--" He checked himself, and confusedly repeated his first words. "I'll do anything," he reiterated earnestly--"anything in the world to help her!"
"Do you really mean that, Mr. Armadale? Excuse my asking; but you can very materially help Miss Neelie, if you choose!"
"How?" asked Allan. "Only tell me how!"
"By giving me your authority, sir, to protect her from Miss Gwilt."
Having fired that shot pointblank at his client, the wise lawyer waited a little to let it take its effect before he said any more.
Allan's face clouded, and he shifted uneasily from side to side of his chair.
"Your son is hard enough to deal with, Mr. Pedgift," he said, "and you are harder than your son."
"Thank you, sir," rejoined the ready Pedgift, "in my son's name and my own, for a handsome compliment to the firm. If you really wish to be of assistance to Miss Neelie," he went on, more seriously, "I have shown you the way. You can do nothing to quiet her anxiety which I have not done already. As soon as I had assured her that no misconception of her conduct existed in your mind, she went away satisfied. Her governess's parting threat doesn't seem to have dwelt on her memory. I can tell you, Mr. Armadale, it dwells on mine! You know my opinion of Miss Gwilt; and you know what Miss Gwilt herself has done this very evening to justify that opinion even in your eyes. May I ask, after all that has passed, whether you think she is the sort of woman who can be trusted to confine herself to empty threats?"
The question was a formidable one to answer. Forced steadily back from the position which he had occupied at the outset of the interview, by the irresistible pressure of plain facts, Allan began for the first time to show symptoms of yielding on the subject of Miss Gwilt. "Is there no other way of protecting Miss Milroy but the way you have mentioned?" he asked, uneasily.
"Do you think the major would listen to you, sir, if you spoke to him?" asked Pedgift Senior, sarcastically. "I'm rather afraid he wouldn't honor me with his attention. Or perhaps you would prefer alarming Miss Neelie by telling her in plain words that we both think her in danger? Or, suppose you send me to Miss Gwilt, with instructions to inform her that she has done her pupil a cruel injustice? Women are so proverbially ready to listen to reason; and they are so universally disposed to alter their opinions of each other on application--especially when one woman thinks that another woman has destroyed her prospect of making a good marriage. Don't mind me, Mr. Armadale; I'm only a lawyer, and I can sit waterproof under another shower of Miss Gwilt's tears!"