"Disappoint me? and how can you do that?" asked Mrs. Luttrell, scornfully. "Perhaps you mean that you will winter in the South! If your health requires it, do you think I would stand in the way? You have a sickly air, but it makes you all the more like one whom I well remember—your father's brother, who died of a decline in early youth. No, go if you like; I will not tie you down. You can come back in the summer, and then we will think about your settling down and marrying. There are plenty of nice girls in the neighbourhood, though none so good as Angela, nor perhaps so handsome as Elizabeth Murray."
"Mother, I shall never marry."
"Not marry? and why not?" cried Mrs. Luttrell, indignantly. "But you say this to tease me only; being a Luttrell—the only Luttrell, indeed, save Hugo, that remains—you must marry and continue the family."
"I shall never marry," said Dino, with a firmness which at last seemed to make an impression upon Mrs. Luttrell, "because I am going to be a monk."
Hugo could not stifle a quick catching of his breath. Did Dino mean what he said? And what effect would this decision have upon the lives of the many persons whose future seemed to be bound up with his? What would Mrs. Luttrell say?
At first she said nothing. And then Dino's voice was heard again.
"Mother, my mother, do not look at me like that. I must follow my vocation. I would have given myself years ago, but I was not allowed. The Prior will receive me now. And nothing on earth will turn me from my resolution. I have made up my mind."
"What!" said Mrs. Luttrell, very slowly. "You will desert me too, after all these years!"
Dino answered by repeating in Latin the words—"He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me." But Mrs. Luttrell interrupted him angrily.
"I want none of your Latin gibberish," she said. "I want plain commonsense. If you go into a monastery, do you intend to give the property to the monks? Perhaps you want to turn Netherglen into a convent, and establish a priory at Strathleckie? Well, I cannot prevent you. What fools we are to think that there is any happiness in this world!"