“Michael! You knew about Lonsdale?”
“I didn’t know about him in particular, but I knew that there had been people. That’s one of the reasons I’m going to marry her.”
“But you’ll lose all your friends. It would be impossible for you to go on knowing Lonsdale, for instance.”
“Marriage seems to destroy friendships in any case,” Michael said. “You couldn’t have a better example of that than Stella and Alan. I daresay I shall be able to make new friends.”
“But, darling boy,” she said pleadingly, “your position will be so terribly ambiguous. Here you are with everything that you can possibly want, with any career you choose open to you. And you let yourself be dragged down by this horrible creature!”
“Mother, believe me, you’re getting a very distorted idea of Lily. She’s beautiful, you know; and if she’s not so clever as Stella, I’m rather glad of it. I don’t think I want a clever wife. At any rate, she hasn’t committed the sin of being common. She won’t disgrace you outwardly, and if Stella hadn’t gone round raking up all this abominable information about her you would have liked her very much.”
“My dearest boy, you are very young, but you surely aren’t too young to know that it’s impossible to marry a woman whose past is not without reproach.”
“But, mother, you ...” he stopped himself abruptly, and looked out of the window in embarrassment. Yet his mother seemed quite unconscious that she was using a weapon which could be turned against herself.
“Will nothing persuade you? Oh, why did Dick Prescott kill himself? I knew at the time that something like this would happen. You won’t marry her, you won’t, will you?”
“Yes, mother. I’m going to,” he said coldly.