Page:The Woman in White.djvu/310

 whole interest fixed breathlessly on the conversation; and I followed it word for word.

"Crisis?" repeated Sir Percival. "It's a worse crisis than you think for, I can tell you."

"So I should suppose, from your behaviour for the last day or two," returned the other coolly. "But wait a little. Before we advance to what I do not know, let us be quite certain of what I do know.  Let us first see if I am right about the time that is past, before I make any proposal to you for the time that is to come."

"Stop till I get the brandy and water. Have some yourself."

"Thank you, Percival. The cold water with pleasure, a spoon, and the basin of sugar.  Eau sucrée, my friend&mdash;nothing more."

"Sugar-and-water, for a man of your age!&mdash;There! mix your sickly mess. You foreigners are all alike."

"Now listen, Percival. I will put our position plainly before you, as I understand it; and you shall say if I am right or wrong. You and I both came back to this house from the Continent, with our affairs very seriously embarrassed&mdash;&mdash;"

"Cut it short! I wanted some thousands, and you some hundreds&mdash;and, without the money, we were both in a fair way to go to the dogs together. There's the situation.  Make what you can of it.  Go on."

"Well, Percival, in your own solid English words, you wanted some thousands and I wanted some hundreds; and the only way of getting them was for you to raise the money for your own necessity (with a small margin, beyond, for my poor little hundreds), by the help of your wife. What did I tell you about your wife on our way to England? and what did I tell you again, when we had come here, and when I had seen for myself the sort of woman Miss Halcombe was?"

"How should I know? You talked nineteen to the dozen, I suppose, just as usual."

"I said this: Human ingenuity, my friend, has hitherto only discovered two ways in which a man can manage a woman. One way is to knock her down&mdash;a method largely adopted by the brutal lower orders of the people, but utterly abhorrent to the refined and educated classes above them.  The other way (much longer, much more difficult, but, in the end, not less certain) is never to accept a provocation at a woman's hands.  It holds with animals, it holds with children, and it holds with women, who are nothing but children grown up.  Quiet resolution is the one quality the animals, the children, and the