Mr. Sarrazin reluctantly reminded her that the father had a right. “No person--not even the mother--can take the child out of the father’s custody,” he said, “except with the father’s consent. His authority is the supreme authority--unless it happens that the law has deprived him of his privilege, and has expressly confided the child to the mother’s care. Ha!” cried Mr. Sarrazin, twisting round in his chair and fixing his keen eyes on Mrs. Presty, “look at your good mother; _she_ sees what I am coming to.”
“I see something more than you think,” Mrs. Presty answered. “If I know anything of my daughter’s nature, you will find yourself, before long, on delicate ground.”
Mrs. Presty had lived in the past age when persons occasionally used metaphor as an aid to the expression of their ideas. Being called upon to explain herself, she did it in metaphor, to her own entire satisfaction.
“Our learned friend here reminds me, my dear Catherine, of a traveler exploring a strange town. He takes a turning, in the confident expectation that it will reward him by leading him to some satisfactory result--and he finds himself in a blind alley, or, as the French put it (I speak French fluently), in a _cool de sack_. Do I make my meaning clear, Mr. Sarrazin?”
“How very extraordinary! Perhaps I have been misled by my own vivid imagination. Let me endeavor to express myself plainly--let me say that my fancy looks prophetically at what you are going to do, and sincerely wishes you well out of it. Pray go on.”
“And pray speak more plainly than my mother has spoken,” Mrs. Linley added. “As I understood what you said just now, there is a law, after all, that will protect me in the possession of my little girl. I don’t care what it costs; I want that law.”
“May I ask first,” Mr. Sarrazin stipulated, “whether you are positively resolved not to give way to your husband in this matter of Kitty?”
“One more question, if you please, on a matter of fact. I have heard that you were married in Scotland. Is that true?”
Mr. Sarrazin exhibited himself once more in a highly unprofessional aspect. He clapped his hands, and cried, “Bravo!” as if he had been in a theater.
Mrs. Linley caught the infection of the lawyer’s excitement. “How dull I am!” she exclaimed. “There is a thing they call ‘incompatibility of temper’--and married people sign a paper at the lawyer’s and promise never to trouble each other again as long as they both live. And they’re readier to do it in Scotland than they are in England. That’s what you mean--isn’t it?”