The next morning, which was of a Saturday, when I did not go to town, he
came over to us again from the shadow of his sombre maples, and fell
simply and naturally into talk about his engagement. He was much fuller
in my wife's presence than he had been with me alone, and told us the
hopes he had of Mrs. Bentley's yielding within a reasonable time. He
seemed to gather encouragement from the sort of perspective he got the
affair into by putting it before us, and finding her dissent to her
daughter's marriage so ridiculous in our eyes after her consent to her
engagement that a woman of her great good sense evidently could not
persist in it.
"There is no personal objection to myself," he said, with a modest
satisfaction. "In fact, I think she really likes me, and only dislikes
my engagement to Edith. But she knows that Edith is incapable of
marrying against her mother's will, or I of wishing her to do so; though
there is nothing else to prevent us."