The nauseous pill of self-reproach was so thickly sugared and gilded by this inspiration that in a while he was not only able to take it without making wry faces, but with an actual sense of relish and self-approval. This was naturally a good deal dashed by the coming interview with Madge’s mother, about whose unknown personality there began to cluster some self-contradictory ideas. That lady would be a most unnatural mother if she rejected the proposal he had to lay before her, and a most unnatural mother if she accepted it. In his reflections, according to his mood, he saw either horn of this dilemma so clearly that the other vanished from his mind, but it always assumed its proper reality again, and made its companion altogether visionary.
When at last the fatal hour for the interview arrived, he went to the rendezvous in a pitiable state of hope and fear. He had always his whole life through carried all his eggs in one basket, and had been incapable of undertaking more than one emotional enterprise at a time. To lose Madge now would be to lose everything, and his former experiences of the healing powers of time—which were possibly numerous and striking enough—were of no value to him. Obeying the directions he had received, he chartered a cab, and after a half-hour’s tumultuous journey found himself alighting before a pretty villa in Prahran, with a well-ordered garden in front of it full of English shrubs and flowers, amidst which were interspersed a number of sub-tropic plants and trees. He was shown with no delay into a shaded room, where he had some difficulty in making out the figure of a gray-haired lady who sat in an arm-chair to receive him, and who did not rise at his entrance. Madge was standing near her, and as the dazzling effect of the bright sunshine of the streets passed from his eyes he saw the sign of many tears in the two faces before him.
There was an embarrassing silence, which lasted for a full half-minute, and Paul stood there conscious of the mother’s scrutiny, and feeling like a criminal in the dock. The girl herself was the first who found courage and self-control to speak.
‘Mother dear,’ she said in an uncertain voice, ‘this is Mr. Armstrong.’
The elder lady nodded, and with a slight gesture of the hand motioned the visitor to a chair. Paul obeyed the gesture, and waited in silence.
‘You will understand,’ the lady of the house began, ‘how wretchedly sorry I am to see you.’ Paul bowed an assent to this, and could but acknowledge that the unpromising exordium was natural. ‘My daughter has never had a secret from me in her life until within the last few months. She has written of you in her letters from time to time, but never led me to fancy that you were making love to her. I believe you are a married man, Mr. Armstrong?’
‘I am married,’ Paul responded in a voice so strangled and unlike his own that it positively startled him.
‘I cannot help knowing,’ said Mrs. Hampton, ‘that I have made a very serious mistake in giving way to my daughter’s desire to go upon the stage. But I trusted her so completely that I had no fear at all of what has happened. You must know, Mr. Armstrong, that you have misbehaved yourself most cruelly.’
‘I have said so to myself a thousand times,’ said Paul, ‘and I have no defence to offer now.’
‘You have done a wicked and a cruel thing,’ pursued the mother. ‘You have brought my daughter into opposition with me for the first time in her life, and you have filled her head with ideas which can only lead to suffering and disgrace.’