Her words, and the tone in which they were spoken, softened his anger. "You would welcome her as my wife?" he asked.
"Oh yes, I would," she said. "And I will, Dick, when this trouble is over. If she will love me I will love her. Yes, I have seen her, twice."
"Thank you very much, mother," he said quietly, after a short pause.
"Dick," she began again, "you know your father. You know how unhappy it must make him to be parted from you. You are bearing very hardly on him."
"And he on me, mother," said Dick. "What do you want me to do? Give up Virginia? You haven't come here to ask me to do that?"
"No, not that, Dick."
"Or to wait for a year? That's Walter's scheme—at least, I believe it's Herbert Birkett's. Very kind of him to take a hand in the discussion. But I'm not going to wait a year. I'm not going to wait any time. Why should I? If I make concessions of that sort I'm giving away my case, I'm admitting that there's some sense in the objections made—some reason in them. There's none. I won't submit Virginia to the indignity. I'm sorry now I ever got her down to Meadshire. I did that because I knew what—what his prejudices would be, and I thought he should have a chance of getting over them."
"Then you did think, at first, that there was something to be said for his prejudices."
"Er—yes—to the extent that if I had put it baldly that I was going to marry a widow, an American, who had been for a time on the stage—years ago—although I confess I didn't think that would be known—there might be trouble. I thought then, and I think now, that if he had given her a fair chance—if he had got to know her, he couldn't possibly take the line he has. There isn't a soul down there—I've heard all about it—who isn't at her feet. It makes me furious—I hardly let myself think about it—that he should behave as he does. No, mother, it has gone too far. There is nothing I can do now, after all that has happened, that wouldn't be an admission of weakness."
She did not speak immediately. "Have you made up your mind," she asked, "to cut yourself off from all of us—never to come to Kencote again until your father dies—never to see him again?"