"Thank you," says Geoffrey, a little dryly, accepting her words as they are said, not as he feels they are meant.
Then there is another pause, rather longer than the last, Lady Rodney trifles with the fan in a somewhat excited fashion, and Geoffrey gazes, man-like, at his boots. At last his mother breaks the silence.
"Is she—is she noisy?" she asks, in a faltering tone.
"Well, she can laugh, if you mean that," says Geoffrey somewhat superciliously. And then, as though overcome with some recollection in which the poor little criminal who is before the bar bore a humorous part, he lays his head down upon the mantelpiece and gives way to hearty laughter himself.
"I understand," says Lady Rodney, faintly, feeling her burden is "greater than she can bear." "She is, without telling, a young woman who laughs uproariously, at everything,—no matter what,—and takes good care her vulgarity shall be read by all who run."
Now, I can't explain why but I never knew a young man who was not annoyed when the girl he loved was spoken of as a "young woman." Geoffrey takes it as a deliberate insult.
"There is a limit to everything,—even my patience," he says, not looking at his mother. "Mona is myself, and even from you, my mother, whom I love and reverence, I will not take a disparaging word of her."
There is a look upon his face that recalls to her his dead father, and Lady Rodney grows silent. The husband of her youth had been dear to her, in a way, until age had soured him, and this one of all his three children most closely resembled him, both in form and in feature; hence, perhaps, her love for him. She lowers her eyes, and a slow blush—for the blood rises with difficulty in the old—suffuses her face.
And then Geoffrey, marking all this, is vexed within himself, and, going over to her, lays his arm once more around her neck, and presses his cheek to hers.
"Don't let us quarrel," he says, lovingly. And this time she returns his caress very fondly, though she cannot lose sight of the fact that he has committed a social error not to be lightly overlooked.