"Now, old lady, don't be foolish about it. Do you want it to be said that I beat you in the matter of common sense? Kate and I must leave you sooner or later."
She fell into an obstinate silence, her face averted from her son's; it seemed as if she heard nothing of his fragmentary explanations. Then, at last—
"It is I who ought to leave. The Manor is yours, not mine."
"Mother, how can you!" He knelt at her feet, and took her hands, and tried to force her eyes to meet his.
But she would neither look at him nor suffer his endearments.
"Get up, Griff, and leave me alone. I don't want to hear any more excuses."
There was such a peremptory sharpness in her voice that Griff had no choice but to obey. The quarrel had come, but he had not dreamed that his mother would have taken it as badly as this.
The fire had burnt very low when he next ventured into the room. The old lady was still in the same attitude.
"Mother," whispered Griff.
She made no answer for awhile; then the tears ran slowly down her cheeks—those scanty tears of the old, which are so much bitterer, so much more heavily laden, at the end of a lifetime's disappointments.