"Persecute her! What nonsense you men do talk! As if any woman in her condition could be persecuted by being asked to become a baronet's wife. I suppose I must go down."
"I beg that you will not, mother."
"She is just one of those women who are sure to stand off, not knowing their own minds. The best creature in the world, and really very clever, but weak in that respect! She has not had lovers when she was young, and she thinks that a man should come dallying about her as though she were eighteen. It only wants a little perseverance, John, and if you'll take my advice, you'll go down to Littlebath after her."
But John, in this matter, would not follow his mother's advice, and declared that he would take no further steps. "He was inclined," he said, "to think that Margaret was right. Why should any woman burden herself with nine children?"
Then Lady Ball said a great deal more about the Ball money, giving it as her decided opinion that Margaret owed herself and her money to the Balls. As she could not induce her son to do anything, she wrote a rejoinder to her niece.
"My dearest Margaret," she said, "Your letter has made both me and John very unhappy. He has set his heart upon making you his wife, and I don't think will ever hold up his head again if you will not consent. I write now instead of John, because he is so much oppressed. I wish you had remained here, because then we could have talked it over quietly. Would it not be better for you to be here than living alone at Littlebath? for I cannot call that little girl who is at school anything of a companion. Could you not leave her as a boarder, and come to us for a month? You would not be forced to pledge yourself to anything further; but we could talk it over."
It need hardly be said that Miss Mackenzie, as she read this, declared to herself that she had no desire to talk over her own position with Lady Ball any further.
"John is afraid," the letter went on to say, "that he offended you by the manner of his proposition; and that he said too much about the children, and not enough about his own affection. Of course he loves you dearly. If you knew him as I do, which of course you can't as yet, though I hope you will, you would be aware that no consideration, either of money or about the children, would induce him to propose to any woman unless he loved her. You may take my word for that."
There was a great deal more in the letter of the same kind, in which Lady Ball pressed her own peculiar arguments; but I need hardly say that they did not prevail with Miss Mackenzie. If the son could not induce his cousin to marry him, the mother certainly never would do so. It did not take her long to answer her aunt's letter. She said that she must, with many thanks, decline for the present to return to the Cedars, as the charge which she had taken of her niece made her presence at Littlebath necessary. As to the answer which she had given to John, she was afraid she could only say that it must stand. She had felt a little angry with Lady Ball; and though she tried not to show this in the tone of her letter, she did show it.
"If I were you I would never see her or speak to her again," said Lady Ball to her son.