“Didn’t propose!” dropping her work on her knee, and lifting her eyes in astonishment.
“No, mummie. I advised him not to.”
Lawrence’s rare smile spread over his face.
“My dear, what do you mean?” said Mrs Carew with a helpless look.
“Well, mother, what was the good of Lord Selloyd making a fool of himself any more than he could help by asking me to marry him, when I was certain to decline with thanks? I didn’t put it to him quite like that, but it came to the same thing in the end, and he had the sense to see it and go away.”
“You are hopeless, quite hopeless; and I believe you make her worse, Lawrence.”
“No, indeed,” answered Lawrence from the depths of his easy-chair. “I have been at great pains to point out to her the ineffable benefits of a coronet, to say nothing of a husband who is—well—like cotton-wool in the hands of a strong-minded woman.”
“You are both leagued against me,” continued the mother, shaking her head. “If the same thing happens again, Lawrence, I shall just expect you to marry her yourself, and what will happen to your quiet Irish home then I’m afraid to think.” She spread out her hands with a gesture of hopelessness, but there was a twinkle in her eyes that made the mother and daughter for a moment wonderfully alike. “Gwen buried in the Mourne Mountains would result in a social tornado, and a year of libel actions. She’d just scandalise the whole countryside and set every one quarrelling to break the monotony, and though you think you are very strong-minded, Lawrence, you’d find your match in Gwen; and I ought to know, being her mother.”
Owen laughed gayly, without the smallest shadow of self-consciousness, for marriage between herself and Lawrence had been so long talked of with jesting freedom that it embarrassed neither of them in the smallest degree, although there were many who firmly believed it would eventually ensue.
“We’d get mummie to come and smooth things over, wouldn’t we?” she laughed, and sauntered to the piano, afterward singing several songs in a rich and beautiful contralto. When she was tired of singing she came back to the fireplace and, seating herself upon a low footstool, remarked to her mother with a side-glance at Lawrence: “Has Lawrie told you about his Irish friend yet, mummie?”