"Will I wish 'ee joy, Ishmael?" he asked. "'Tes easy to see where your heart be set. Does the maid feel she can love 'ee and Cloom Manor?"
The last words and some indefinable quality in the tone jarred on Ishmael, disturbing the satisfaction he had felt glowing over him at the supper-table.
"If you mean have I proposed to Miss Grey?" he said a little pompously as youth will speak, "I have."
"And will she have 'ee, or has she given 'ee a clout in th' ear?"
Ishmael hated having to tell this barbarian anything about his lovely Blanche; he turned sick when he thought that this would be Blanche's brother ... free to call her by her name, to take her hand.... All he could bring himself to say was that he believed Miss Grey was going to become his wife, but that he would thank Archelaus not to go talking about it, as nothing was to be made public as yet.
"There are other people to consider," he said: "her relations whom I shall have to see, and a lot of things like that. It is not like marrying a girl from the nearest village," he added tactlessly, but without, in his self-absorption, meaning to wound.
Archelaus drew away through the night. He laughed a little.
"Not as if you was wedding Phoebe, who's only a miller's girl?" he asked. Ishmael laughed too, though a little doubtfully, not sure of the cordiality of Archelaus's chuckle.
"Of course it's not like. Phoebe's a dear little thing, but Miss Grey is different, naturally."
In the passage Archelaus ran into Phoebe, emerging with the other girls, and took from her with an air of gallantry the wrap she had upon her arm.
"I'll put 'ee home," he told her: "best have this on; 'tes a bit cool on cliff."
"Oh, but--" began Phoebe. She had no hopes, such as she had cherished, against all reason, upon getting Ishmael's note that morning, of a moonlit walk home with him, but something in her shrank from the walk undertaken with Archelaus. He wrapped the shawl about her as she spoke. Phoebe could no more have resisted a man who had his mind made up than a frog can get away from a viper which has once sighted it, and she let herself be swathed without further protest. Good-byes were said, with careless affection on the part of Vassie, and kindliness from Judith and a pressure of the hand and a deep look from Blanche.