"All this is very sudden. You should have told us of it before."
"I did not know it myself till—till very lately," the youth answered more softly, lowering his head and blushing.
"Is Miss Silver—is the lady aware of it?"
"No."
"That is well," said the father, after a pause. "In this silence you have acted as an honourable lover should towards her; as a dutiful son should act towards his parents."
Guy looked pleased. He stole his hand nearer his mother's, but she neither took it nor repelled it; she seemed quite stunned.
At this point I noticed that Maud had crept into the room;—I sent her out again as quickly as I could. Alas! this was the first secret that needed to be kept from her; the first painful mystery in our happy, happy home!
In any such home the "first falling in love," whether of son or daughter, necessarily makes a great change. Greater if the former than the latter. There is often a pitiful truth—I know not why it should be so, but so it is—in the foolish rhyme which the mother had laughingly said over to me this morning!
"My son's my son till he gets him a wife,
My daughter's my daughter all her life."
And when, as in this case, the son wishes to marry one whom his father may not wholly approve, whom his mother does not heartily love, surely the pain is deepened tenfold.