“Has anything happened since yesterday to increase their distrust of me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“You remember referring my uncle to a friend of yours and of his?”
“Yes. To Major Fitz-David.”
“My uncle has written to Major Fitz-David.”
“Why?”
He pronounced that one word in a tone so utterly unlike his natural tone that his voice sounded quite strange to me.
“You won’t be angry, Eustace, if I tell you?” I said. “My uncle, as I understood him, had several motives for writing to the major. One of them was to inquire if he knew your mother’s address.”
Eustace suddenly stood still.
I paused at the same moment, feeling that I could venture no further without the risk of offending him.
To speak the truth, his conduct, when he first mentioned our engagement to my uncle, had been (so far as appearances went) a little flighty and strange. The vicar had naturally questioned him about his family. He had answered that his father was dead; and he had consented, though not very readily, to announce his contemplated marriage to his mother. Informing us that she too lived in the country, he had gone to see her, without more particularly mentioning her address. In two days he had returned to the Vicarage with a very startling message. His mother intended no disrespect to me or my relatives, but she disapproved so absolutely of her son’s marriage that she (and the members of her family, who all agreed with her) would refuse to be present at the ceremony, if Mr. Woodville persisted in keeping his engagement with Dr. Starkweather’s niece. Being asked to explain this extraordinary communication, Eustace had told us that his mother and his sisters were bent on his marrying another lady, and that they were bitterly mortified and disappointed by his choosing a stranger to the family. This explanation was enough for
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