The sick woman shook her head mournfully.
“I repeat my words,” he said: “as you have blessed my father’s life. Well, I have been restless and foolish, perhaps, but I am sobered down now, and I mean to marry. I cannot help it, mamma, and I am quite prepared to have plenty of opposition to my proposal, and to be told that I am marrying beneath me; all the same, I mean to marry Sage Portlock, and I ask you to help me.”
Mrs Mallow tried persuasion, pointed out how directly this would be in opposition to his father’s wishes, and how the Churchwarden had set his face against it; but all she said only seemed to strengthen her son’s desire, and the natural consequence was that very soon Mrs Mallow began to talk earnestly to the Rector, but for quite a month without any other effect than angering him more against his son, whom he accused of fighting against his sisters’ prospects.
But when the father began to find that with patient pertinacity the son was keeping up his pursuit of Sage, the words of his wife began to have more effect, and one day, during a visit to the school, the old gentleman found himself speaking to Sage with greater deference, and thoughtfully musing over the possibility of her becoming his sons wife.
“It is terrible though,” he mused; “just as his sisters are about to make brilliant matches. It is like degrading them.”
That night, however, the Rector heard something about Cyril having been seen a great deal down by the ford lately, and quick to take alarm, warned as he had been by earlier escapades, he began to think more seriously, and went down to the school a great deal more.
“Better that than disgrace,” he said; “a fresh scandal would almost kill her, poor sweet. Ah, me! she has much to bear.”
He sighed weakly and went to the school again, setting Sage Portlock in a flutter by his quiet paternal ways, and he came away at last avowing that if the object of his son’s affections had been the daughter of a brother clergyman, he would have been delighted to find in her the child his son should bring to him to take a place within his heart.
Then he began thinking about Lord Artingale and Mr Perry-Morton, and he grew angry; but again he was obliged to say to himself, It would settle Cyril perhaps. Better that than a fresh scandal.
He tried to find failings in Sage—seeing in her conduct cause of offence—but without avail, for she gave him no hold whatever, and he went away thinking of her deeply, and wondering what was to be the end.