"I shan't be sensible in that way," says her son, very hotly. "Put it out of your head. To me Miss Bolton (it is really ridiculous to call her Miss anything; she ought to be Betty, or Lizzie, or Lily, or whatever her name is, to everyone at her age)—to me she seems nothing but a baby—and—I hate babies!"
"Marian has taught you!" Says his mother, with a sneer. "She certainly is not a baby, whatever else she may be. But I tell you this, Maurice, that you will hate far more being left a beggar in the world, without enough money to keep yourself alive."
"I am sure I can keep myself alive."
"Yes, but how? You, who have been petted and pampered all your life?"
"Oh, don't speak to me as if I were in the cradle!" says Maurice, with a shrug.
"Do you never think?"
"Sometimes".
"Oh yes, of Marian. That designing woman! Do you believe I haven't read her, if you are still blind? She will hold you on and on and on. And if your uncle should chance to die, why, then she will marry you; but if in the meantime she meets anyone with money who will marry her, why, good-bye to you. But you must not marry! Mind that! You must be held in chains whilst she goes free. Really, Maurice," rising and regarding him with extreme contempt, "your folly is so great over this absurd infatuation for Marian, that sometimes I wonder if you can be my own son."
"I am my father's son also," says Maurice. "He, I believe, did sometimes believe in somebody. He believed in you."
He turns away abruptly, and an inward laugh troubles him. Was that last gibe not an argument against himself, his judgment? Like his father; is he like his father? Can he, too, see only gold where dross lies deep? Sometimes, of late he has doubted. The laughter dies away, he sighs heavily.