"You must," mother returned hardily; she spoke casually, as if she were reminding me to send a postcard to notify her of my safe arrival. "I shall not hesitate to go to Cheneston and tell him you are frantically and desperately in love with him, and what may have been jest to him is grim reality to you, and unless he marries you he'll ruin your happiness. I shall be able to say it sincerely because I know it to be true. You are going to tell Cheneston that Walter Markham quite understands why you are staying at Cromer Court, that you have unlocked your lovers' hearts to each other."
I spoke rudely to mother for the first time in my life, my fear of her was swept away by a sudden passion of rebellion.
"Oh, shut up!" I said furiously. "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"
She looked at me curiously, her lips a little compressed.
"We should have trained you for the stage," she said. "There is an abandon about you at times that would do better for the theatre than real life—where it is merely crude and bad form."
"It seems to me that everything real and vital and honest, all forms of emotion and feeling, are bad form!"
"Nearly all."
"Except borrowing from your friends and threatening your daughter."
Mother shrugged and looked out of the window.
"Unless your father can produce five hundred pounds within the week he will be forced to resign his commission, in which case he would get no pension, and as he has no influence and no brains the prospect of our future does not intrigue me."