“Yes—but wasn’t I right, mother?” he asked, quickly. “What could I do? He acted like a madman, and he dragged Katharine from me and whirled her off upon the floor as though he’d been handling a man in a free fight. I couldn’t stand that.”
“No—of course you couldn’t,” answered Mrs. Ralston. “I don’t see what you could have done but hit him, I’m sure. And yet it’s a shocking affair—it is, really. I’m afraid it’s cost uncle Robert his life, poor, dear old man!”
“Poor man!” echoed Ralston, thoughtfully. “Routh didn’t seem to think he could live through the night. We may get word at any moment.”
“The wonder is that he didn’t die then and there. And there’s no one with him, either—Katharine laid up in her room—why didn’t you stay in the house, Jack?”
“Routh wouldn’t let me. He’s there. He told me I should only be in the way and that he’d send for me, if anything happened. It’s an odd thing, mother—but there’s no one to go to uncle Robert but you and I and cousin Emma. He’d have a fit if he saw cousin Alexander. And of course the old gentleman can’t go.” He meant Robert’s brother.
“No—of course not.”
A short silence followed, and Mrs. Ralston seemed to be thinking over the situation.
“Well, Jack,” she said, at last, “what are we going to do? This state of things can’t go on.”
“No. It can’t. It shan’t. And I won’t let it. Mother—you know we talked last winter—you said that if ever I wanted to marry Katharine—wanted to! Well—that we could manage to live here—”
It would be hard to give any adequate idea of the reluctance with which John approached the subject. Short of the consideration of Katharine’s personal safety, which he believed to be endangered by the life she was made to lead, nothing could have induced him to think of laying the burden of his married life upon his mother’s comparatively slender fortune. Although half of it was his, for she had made it over to him by a deed during the previous winter, out of a conviction that he should feel himself to be independent, yet he had never quite accepted the position, and still regarded all there was as being, morally speaking, her property. But now she met him more than half way.