"Well, she wouldn't let me, dear," said Ben more gently, flushing and feeling his first qualm. "I would stake my life that she is as beautiful within as without and that you would have a treasure as well as I. It wasn't deserting you. I was thinking of you. I felt she was worthy of you and no one else is."
"This is raving, Ben," said his mother, quiet again. "He has escaped," she thought, "and now nothing will come of it." She raised her drooping head and again regarded him deprecatingly. "Let us talk of something else," she added.
"No," he returned firmly; "not until you understand that I am entirely in earnest. You had your love-affair, now I am having mine, and I am going through with it, openly and in the sight of all men. I urged her a second time to marry me this afternoon, and she looked at me soberly with those glorious eyes and her only answer was: 'I want your mother to love me.'" Ben looked off reminiscently. "It encouraged me to hope that she cares for me a little that your coldness bowled her over so completely."
Mrs. Barry looked at him helplessly, and this time when she put up her napkin she touched a corner of her eye.
"We stopped at the landing-field at Townley and had our talk," he went on.
"And she seemed refined?" Mrs. Barry's voice was a little uncertain.
"Exquisite!" he exclaimed.
"You have standards, Ben," she said. "You couldn't be totally fooled by beauty."
He smiled upon her for the first time and a very warming light shone in his eyes. "The best," he replied, leaning toward her. "You."
She drew a long, quavering breath; but she scorned weeping women.