"She is so refreshing after the things you hear about other girls," pursued Mrs. Culpeper. "Poor Mrs. St. John was obliged to go to a rest cure, they say, because of the worry she has had over Geraldine; and the other girls are almost as troublesome, I suppose. That is why I am so thankful that you should have taken a fancy to Margaret. She is just the kind of girl I should like to have for a daughter-in-law."
"You'll have a long time to wait, Mother. I don't want to marry anybody until I need a nurse in my old age."
He spoke jestingly, but his mother, with her usual tenacity, held fast to the subject. Under the flickering gas light in the hall (they were still suspicious of the effect of electricity on Mr. Culpeper's eyes) her face looked grimly determined, as if an indomitable purpose had moulded every feature and traced every line in some thin plastic substance.
"I have set my heart on this, Stephen."
At this he laughed aloud with an indecorous mirth. In spite of her instincts and traditions how lacking in feminine finesse, how utterly without subtlety of method she was! She had stood always for the unconquerable will in the fragile body, and she had used to the utmost her two strong weapons of obstinacy and weakness. He did not know whether the dread of being nagged or the fear of hurting her had influenced him most; and when he looked back he could recall only a series of ineffectual efforts at evasion or denial. It is true that he had once adored her—that he still loved her—but it was a love, like his father's, which was forbearing but never free, which was always furtive and a little ashamed of its own weakness. Ever since he could remember she had triumphed over their inclinations, their convictions, and even their appetites, for they had eaten only what she thought good for them. She had invariably gained her point; and she had gained it with few words, without temper or agitation, by sheer force of character. If she had been a moral principle she could not have moved more relentlessly.
"Mrs. Blair and I used to talk it over when you and Margaret were children," she continued, in the inflexible tone with which she was accustomed to carry her point. "Even then you were fond of her."
He looked at her with a gleam of the tolerant amusement he had caught from his father's expression. "Can you imagine anything more certain to turn a man against a marriage than the thought that it was arranged for him in his infancy?" he objected.
"Not if he knew that his mother had set her heart on it?" She looked hurt but resolute.
"Don't set your heart on it, Mother. Let me dree my own weird."
"My dear boy, it is for your own good. I am sure that you know I am not thinking of myself. I may say with truth that I never think of myself."