“Oh! it is too much—too much!” she cried. “Ungrateful, wicked, unloving son, is it thus you have returned the deep, unwearying affection I have ever cherished for you?”
“The most bitter reproaches you can level at me can never equal in intensity those which I have heaped on my own head,” Paul replied.
“You must have been mad to let yourself be entrapped in this way,” Mrs. Desfrayne went on. “I can scarcely believe it is true. You are, then, really bound to this—this singing woman who cares nothing for you, who seems to disdain you and all belonging to you. Oh! it is incredible. And what about Miss Turquand?”
“I know not,” answered Paul wearily. “I wish to Heaven I had never seen or heard of the eccentric old fogy who chose to imagine himself under some debt of gratitude to me, for then——”
“Folly!” angrily interrupted his mother. “Better wish you had never seen this woman who owns you—or that you had not been so——”
She shrugged her shoulders with an expression indescribable.
There was a brief pause.
“It would be as ridiculous as it would be undignified on my part to display any resentment against you,” Mrs. Desfrayne resumed. “Of course, you had a right to please yourself: though married in haste, you are repenting at leisure. But what are you going to do?”
“In what way?”
“Good heavens! so long as that woman lives, there is not a ray of happiness for you.”