"Meet him. Yes. What have you to say to it?"
"But why meet him?—Why now?" The wonder on Valerie's face had broken to almost merriment. "Did he ask you to?—Really, really, he oughtn't to. Really, my child, I can't have you meeting Sir Basil in the woods at midnight."
"You can't have me meeting him in the woods at midnight?" Imogen repeated, an ominous cadence, holding her head high and taking long breaths. "You say that, dare say it, when you well know that I can meet him nowhere else and in no other way. It was I who asked him to meet me here and it is here, confronted with you, if you so choose; it is here, before you and under God's stars, that I shall know the truth from him. I am not ashamed; I am proud to say it;—I love him. And though you scheme, and stoop and strive to take him from me—you, with Jack to help you—Jack to lie for you—as he did this morning,—I know, I know in my heart and soul that he loves me, that he is mine."
"Jack!—Jack!" Valerie cried. She caught him back, for he started forward to seize, to gag her daughter; "Jack—remember, remember!—She doesn't understand!"
"Oh, he may strike me if he wills." Imogen had stood quite still, not flinching.
"I don't want to strike you—you—you idiot!"—Jack was gasping. "I want to force you to your knees, before your mother—who loves you—as no one else who knows you will ever love you!" And, helplessly, his old words, so trite, so inadequate, came back to him. "You self-centered, you self-righteous, you cold-hearted girl!"
Valerie still held his arm with both hands, leaning upon him.
"Imogen," she said, speaking quickly, "you needn't meet Sir Basil in this way;—there is nothing to prevent you from seeing him where and when you will. You are right in believing that he loves you. He asked me this morning for your hand. And I gave him my consent."
From a virgin saint Imogen, as if with the wave of a wand, saw herself turned into a rather foolish genie, so transformed and then, ever so swiftly, run into a bottle;—it was surely the graceful seal firmly affixed thereto when she heard these words of conformity to the traditions of dignified betrothal. And for once in her life, so bottled and so sealed, she looked, as if through the magic crystal of her mother's words, absolutely, helplessly foolish. It is difficult for a genie in a bottle to look contrite or stricken with anything deeper than astonishment; nor is it practicable in such a situation to fall upon one's knees,—if a genie were to feel such an impulse of self-abasement. It was perhaps a comfort to all concerned, including a new-comer, that Imogen should be reduced to the silence of sheer stupefaction; and as Sir Basil appeared among them it was not at him, after her first wide glance, that she looked, but, still as if through the crystal bottle, at her mother, and the look was, at all events, a confession of utter inadequacy to deal with the situation in which she found herself.
It was Valerie, once more, who steered them all past the giddy whirlpool. Jack, beside her, his heart and brain turning in dizzy circles, marveled at her steadiness of eye, her clearness of voice. He would have liked to lean against a tree and get his breath; but this delicate creature, rising from her rack, could move forward to her place beside the helm, and smile!