“What do you mean by that?” said her mother, stiffening.
“I mean Jack Latimer.”
“Jack Latimer? One of your father’s clerks! Maud, come in here at once. I can’t stand talking in the hall of things like this.”
“No, I won’t come in,” cried Maud, backing away against the baluster, and feeling as she used to do in her juvenile days, when she was hauled by the hand to the scene of punishment. “There’s nothing more to talk about. I’m engaged to Jack Latimer, and I’m going to marry him, and that’s the beginning and the end of it all.”
She felt desperately defiant, standing there in the darkness looking at her mother’s massive shape against the glow of the lit doorway.
“Jack Latimer!” reiterated Mrs. Shackleton, “who only gets a hundred and fifty dollars a month and has to give some of it to his people.”
“Well, haven’t I got enough for two?”
“Maud, you’ve gone crazy. All I know is that I’ll not let you spoil your future. I’ll write to Count de Lamolle to-morrow, and I’ll write to Jack Latimer, too.”
“What good will that do anybody? Count de Lamolle can’t marry me if I don’t want to. And why should Jack Latimer throw me over because you ask him to? He,” she made a tremulous hesitation that would have touched a softer heart, and then added, “he likes me.”
“Likes you!” repeated her mother, with furious scorn, “he likes the five million dollars.”