Maud’s two-week deadline to consider Dudley’s proposal

Maud’s two-week deadline to consider Dudley’s proposal is the interval Silas imposes after Maud rejects his son. It gives the proposal a coercive timetable: Silas connects Maud’s answer to Dudley’s continued place at home, and the passing fortnight leaves Maud anticipating a summons from the guardian who controls her residence and care.

Background: A Refusal Under Guardianship

Maud’s decision is constrained by the arrangement in Austin’s will. The estate is held in trust for her, but Silas is appointed her sole guardian until she reaches twenty-one, with parental authority and the right to have her live under his care at Bartram-Haugh. The trustees are to pay him £2,000 annually for her maintenance, education, and expenses. This division between Maud’s beneficial interest and Silas’s authority over her person makes his intervention in her marriage more than family advice: she is dependent on the man pressing her to reconsider.

The will also gives the arrangement an explicit financial risk. If Maud dies before reaching twenty-one, the property passes to Silas. Austin described this provision as an ordeal intended to vindicate his brother against a slander and declared his confidence in Silas’s trustworthiness. Doctor Bryerly, however, warns Maud that the guardianship and the prospect of Silas receiving the estate make the trust extraordinary. The deadline therefore falls within a relationship already marked by a conflict between Austin’s stated confidence and the practical power Silas holds over his ward.

Silas Sets the Fortnight

Silas presents Dudley as possessing admirable qualities, including courage and honour, and emphasizes his son’s Ruthyn blood. He then links Maud’s continued refusal to Dudley’s being dismissed from home. Rather than accepting her answer, he asks her to reserve her decision until the same day a fortnight later and forbids discussion of the matter until then. The postponement is framed as time for consideration, but its stated consequence places pressure on Maud: her choice is made to carry the threat of a family rupture imposed by her guardian.

Silas and Dudley spend a long time closeted together that evening. Afterward, flowers appear beside Maud’s place at breakfast, despite the neglected conservatory at Bartram-Haugh. An anonymous green parrot arrives in a gilt cage, addressed to Maud as Miss Ruthyn of Knowl; its care instructions identify the bird as Maud. She leaves the bouquets untouched and insists that Milly keep the parrot. The gifts continue the courtship during the very period in which Silas has ordered silence about the proposal, making the fortnight an interval of indirect persuasion rather than a neutral pause.

The Waiting Period

Dudley does not appear at luncheon or look through the breakfast-room window as he had before. In their walks, Maud and Milly sometimes see him at a distance. He does not join them; instead, he opens gates, calls his dogs to heel, drives cattle away, and withdraws. His conspicuous civility maintains his presence without renewed direct conversation. Milly, despite her limited experience of society, recognizes the gap between the qualities Silas praises and Dudley’s actual conduct.

The fortnight passes quickly, but Maud experiences it as an approach toward an unwanted encounter. She never sees Silas during the interval. Looking back on their last interview, she recalls that its comparatively playful and trivial manner left her with an unusually strong sense of fear and insecurity. On a dark, rainy day, she waits in Milly’s room, certain that her punctual guardian’s summons will come. The parrot’s name, Maud, recalls the courtship token as she longs to escape the interview awaiting her.

Significance and Outcome of the Interval

The deadline converts a proposal Maud has already rejected into an unresolved demand. Its mechanism is simple but consequential: Silas fixes a date, invokes Dudley’s possible expulsion from home, and retains the authority to summon Maud while she lives under his guardianship. The interval’s apparent courtesies—the bouquets, the bird, Dudley’s distant attentions—do not remove that underlying imbalance; they surround the imposed decision with persistent reminders of the suitor and the family pressure behind him.

The supplied passage ends as Maud waits for the summons on the day the fortnight is due to expire. It establishes the deadline’s emotional effect and the pressure built during the wait, but does not yet disclose the answer Maud gives at the ensuing interview.