"I can't; no, I can't,"—spoken with the sharpness of exceeding pain. Soon after, as in faint apology, she added, "I am so tired; we are very late to-night."
"Yes; it is almost morning. I thought you were both in bed."
"No; we have been sitting talking in Guy's room. His father thought it would be better."
"And is all settled?"
"Yes."
Having told me this, and having as it were by such a conclusion confessed it was right the question should be thus "settled," Guy's mother seemed more herself.
"Yes," she repeated; "John thinks it ought to be. At least, that she should know Guy's—the feeling with which Guy regards her. If, after the probation of a year, it still remains, and he is content to begin life on a small income, we have given our consent to our son's marriage."
It struck me how the mother's mind entirely dwelt on the one party in this matter—"Guy's feelings"—"Our son's marriage"—and so on. The other side of the question, or the possibility of any hindrance there, never seemed to enter her imagination. Perhaps it would not, even into mine, for I shared the family faith in its best-beloved Guy; but for Mrs. Halifax's so entirely ignoring the idea that any consent except her son's and his parents' was necessary to this marriage.
"It will not part him from us so very much, you see, Phineas," she said, evidently trying to view the bright side—"and she has no relatives living—not one. For income—Guy will have the entire profit of the Norton Bury mills; and they might begin, as we did, in the old Norton Bury house—the dear old house."
The thought of her own young days seemed to come, soothingly and sweet, taking the sting out of her pain, showing her how it was but right and justice that Nature's holy law should be fulfilled—that children, in their turn, should love, and marry, and be happy, like their parents.