John would have liked to tell his mother that she was on the verge of senile decay; but the dim old fetish of parental respect blinked at him from the jungle of the past, and in a vain search for a way of stopping her without being rude he let her ramble on.
"Of course, she has very nice eyes, and I can quite understand Hughie's taking an interest in her. I don't grudge the dear boy his youth. We all get old in time, and its natural that with us old fogies round him he should be a little interested in Miss Hamilton. All the same, it wouldn't be a prudent match. I dare say she thinks I shall have something to leave Hugh, but I told her only yesterday that I should leave little or nothing."
"My dear Mama, I can assure you that my secretary—my secretary," John repeated with as much pomposity as might impress the old lady, "is not at all dazzled by the glamour of your wealth or James' wealth or George's wealth or anybody's wealth for that matter."
He might have said that the donkey's ears were the only recognizable feature of Midas in the Touchwood family had there been the least chance of his mother's understanding the classical allusion.
"I don't mean to hint that she's only after Hugh's money. I've no doubt at all that she's excessively in love with him."
"Really?" John exclaimed with such a scornfully ironical intonation that his mother asked anxiously if he had a sore throat.
"You might take a little honey and borax, my dear boy," she advised, and immediately continued her estimate of the emotional situation. "Yes, as I say, excessively in love! But there can't be many young women who resist Hugh. Why, even as a boy he had his little love affairs. Dear me, how poor papa used to laugh about them. 'He's going to break a lot of hearts,' poor papa used to say."
"I don't know about hearts," John commented, gruffly. "But he's broken everything else, including himself. However, I can assure you, Mama, that Miss Hamilton's heart is not made of pie-crust, and that she is more than capable of looking after herself."
"Then you agree with me that she has a selfish disposition. I am glad you agree with me. I didn't trust her from the beginning; but I thought you seemed so wrapped up in her cleverness—though when I was young women didn't think it necessary to be clever—that you were quite blind to her selfishness. But I am glad you agree with me. There's nobody who has more sympathy for true love than I have. But though I always said that love makes the world go round, I've never been partial to vulgar flirtations. Indeed, if it had to be, I'd rather they got engaged properly, even if it did mean a long engagement—but leading poor Hughie on like this—well, I must speak plainly, Johnnie, for, after all, I am your mother, though I know it's the fashion now to think that children know more than their parents, and, in my opinion, you ought to put your foot down. There! I've said what I've been wanting to say for a week, and if you jump down my throat, well, then you must, and that's all there is to it."
Now, although John thought his mother fondly stupid and was perfectly convinced when he asked himself the question that Miss Hamilton was as remote from admiring Hugh as he was himself, he was nevertheless unable to resist observing Hugh henceforth with a little of the jealousy that most men of forty-two feel for juniors of twenty-seven. He was not prepared to acknowledge that his opinion of Miss Hamilton was colored by any personal emotion beyond the unqualified respect he gave to her practical qualities, and he was sure that the only reason for anxiety about possible developments between her and Hugh was the loss to himself of her valuable services.