While Lesbia was thus having so miserable a time, George Walker was living very quietly, sometimes in London, but more often in Medmenham. He carefully avoided all mention of Lesbia's name, and when his mother questioned him regarding his reason for refusing to renew the engagement he declined to explain. Mrs. Walker was much annoyed by what she termed his mule-headedness as, after her visit to Rose Cottage, she was quite willing that Lesbia should become her daughter-in-law.
"I cannot understand you, George," said Mrs. Walker to her son during one of their frequent wrangles. "When I objected to this girl, nothing would do but that you must marry her. Now that I have taken a fancy to her, you refuse to have anything to do with her. I never thought a son of mine would blow hot and cold in this silly fashion."
"I am not blowing hot or cold," returned George gloomily; he was very, very gloomy in those days and had lost all his light-heartedness. "Lesbia is the only girl in the world that I care to marry. But how can I make her my wife, when I haven't a penny to keep her with?"
"That is mere evasion. Things are very little changed from the time you would have married her in the teeth of poverty."
"There is this much change, that I have lost my situation with Tait and am now living on my mother, which is the meanest thing a man can do. How then can I renew my engagement with Lesbia?"
"Because I wish you to," said Mrs. Walker promptly, and bent her black brows.
"I understood you hated her."
"Indeed, I never did," she rejoined sharply. "How could I hate anyone whom I had never seen? Don't be a fool, George. I certainly hated her father and I hate him still, for a very good reason, which it does not concern you to know. But after I saw the girl I repented that I had not been to see her before, since you loved her. She is an innocent darling, and I should like no one better for my daughter. It would be unfair to visit the sins of the father on so sweet a child."
"Yet if the child wasn't sweet," said George drily, "you would not mind doing so. You are somewhat inconsistent."
"I am not so inconsistent as you are," said his mother, skilfully avoiding a reply by carrying the war into hic camp. "What I wish to know is--why do you decline to renew your engagement?"