Resigning herself to inevitable fate by making the best of those people,

the Miggleses, and submitting her philosophy to the draught upon it, of

which she had foreseen the likelihood in her interview with Arthur,

Mrs Gowan handsomely resolved not to oppose her son's marriage. In her

progress to, and happy arrival at, this resolution, she was possibly

influenced, not only by her maternal affections but by three politic

considerations.

Of these, the first may have been that her son had never signified the

smallest intention to ask her consent, or any mistrust of his ability

to dispense with it; the second, that the pension bestowed upon her by a

grateful country (and a Barnacle) would be freed from any little filial

inroads, when her Henry should be married to the darling only child of

a man in very easy circumstances; the third, that Henry's debts must

clearly be paid down upon the altar-railing by his father-in-law.

When, to these three-fold points of prudence there is added the fact that

Mrs Gowan yielded her consent the moment she knew of Mr Meagles having

yielded his, and that Mr Meagles's objection to the marriage had

been the sole obstacle in its way all along, it becomes the height of

probability that the relict of the deceased Commissioner of nothing

particular, turned these ideas in her sagacious mind.

Among her connections and acquaintances, however, she maintained her

individual dignity and the dignity of the blood of the Barnacles, by

diligently nursing the pretence that it was a most unfortunate business;

that she was sadly cut up by it; that this was a perfect fascination

under which Henry laboured; that she had opposed it for a long time,

but what could a mother do; and the like. She had already called Arthur

Clennam to bear witness to this fable, as a friend of the Meagles

family; and she followed up the move by now impounding the family itself

for the same purpose.

In the first interview she accorded to Mr Meagles,

she slided herself into the position of disconsolately but gracefully

yielding to irresistible pressure. With the utmost politeness and

good-breeding, she feigned that it was she--not he--who had made the

difficulty, and who at length gave way; and that the sacrifice was

hers--not his.

The same feint, with the same polite dexterity, she

foisted on Mrs Meagles, as a conjuror might have forced a card on that

innocent lady; and, when her future daughter-in-law was presented to her

by her son, she said on embracing her, 'My dear, what have you done to

Henry that has bewitched him so!' at the same time allowing a few tears

to carry before them, in little pills, the cosmetic powder on her nose;

as a delicate but touching signal that she suffered much inwardly for

the show of composure with which she bore her misfortune.




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