"Here, one moment, mater: let me get the full force of your idea. You want ME to MOULD Margaret?"
"Yes, dear."
"Ha!" he laughed uneasily. Then said decidedly: "No, mater, no. I can do most things, but as a moulder—oh, no. Let Ethel do it—if she'll stay, that is."
"Alaric, my dear—I mean to take her really into your life 'to have and to hold.'" And she looked pleadingly at him through her tear-dimmed eyes.
"But, I don't want to hold her, mater!" reasoned her son.
"It would be the saving of her," urged the old lady. "That's all very well, but what about me?"
"It would be the saving of us all!" she insisted significantly. But Alaric was still obtuse. "Now, how would my holding and moulding Margaret save us?" The old lady placed her cards deliberately, on the table as she said sententiously: "She would stay with us here—if you were—engaged to her!" The shock had cone. His mother's terrible alternative was now before him in all its naked horror. A shiver ran through him. The thought of a man, with a future as brilliant as his, being blighted at the outset by such a misalliance. He felt the colour leave his face. He knew he was ghastly pale. The little arbour seemed to close in on him and stifle him. He could scarcely breathe. He murmured, his eyes half closed, as if picturing some vivid nightmare: "Engaged! Don't, mother, please." He trembled again: "Good lord! Engaged to that tomboy!" The thought seemed to strike him to the very core of his being. He who might ally himself with anyone sacrificing his hopes of happiness and advancement with a child of the earth.
"Don't, mother!" he repeated in a cry of entreaty.
"She has the blood of the Kingsnorths!" reminded, Mrs. Chichester. "It is pretty well covered up in O'Connell Irish," replied Alaric bitterly. "Please don't say any more, mater. You have upset me for the day. Really, you have for the whole day." But his mother was not to be shaken so easily in her determination. She went on:
"She has the breeding of my sister Angela, dear."