“Mother, I will marry whom I like—and when I like,” said Kitty.
“But tell me, my darling—you do not like anyone else?” said Mrs. Farnum, coaxingly.
“My dear mother——”
“I do wish you would say ‘mamma,’ and not insist on calling me mother.” And she thought hastily over the men she knew her child had seen that summer. “I hope it is not Van Kull—or that young Holyoke,” she added, in increasing terror.
Kitty turned her back and intimated so plainly a dismissal that the obedient mother felt constrained to go.
“It is young Holyoke,” she thought, with a sigh that was meant to soften her obdurate daughter’s heart.
She poured her troubles in her tired husband’s ear that night: “Kate shall marry whom she likes,” said that unimaginative person. “I guess her half million will be worth any beggarly marquis of them all. You weren’t a countess, when I married you.” And Mrs. Farnum had to cry in silence.
Poor humanity! How much trouble do you give yourselves. As for Kitty Farnum, she had been asked in marriage by the Earl already; and had refused him twice.
CHAPTER XXVI.
FLOSSIE ENJOYS HERSELF.
