"And how did you get on with the old woman?"
"Like a house on fire," said Brooke.
"She didn't quarrel with you?"
"No,—upon the whole she did not. I always felt that it was touch and go. She might or she might not. Every now and then she looked at me, and said a sharp word, as though it was about to come. But I had determined when I went there altogether to disregard that kind of thing."
"It's rather important to you,—is it not?"
"You mean about her money?"
"Of course, I mean about her money," said Stanbury.
"It is important;—and so it was to you."
"Not in the same degree, or nearly so. And as for me, it was not on the cards that we shouldn't quarrel. I am so utterly a Bohemian in all my ideas of life, and she is so absolutely the reverse, that not to have quarrelled would have been hypocritical on my part or on hers. She had got it into her head that she had a right to rule my life; and, of course, she quarrelled with me when I made her understand that she should do nothing of the kind. Now, she won't want to rule you."
"I hope not."