"Tom!"
"It's true, mother."
"Why is that? What have you been doing?"
"Refusing to give up Lucy Burton."
"Oh, Tom, Tom! Why do you set yourself against your father?"
"Well, mother, I don't want to be impertinent; but it seems to me it's no more than you have been doing all your life."
"For conscience' sake, Tom. But in matters indifferent we ought to yield, you know."
"Is it an indifferent matter to keep one's engagements, mother? To be true to one's word?"
"But you had no right to make them."