Vansittart followed her to the drawing-room directly after dinner, and seated himself by her side in the lamplight, and laid his hand on hers as it turned the pages of the book upon her knee.
“Canon Liddon is a delightful writer, mother; logical, clear-headed, and eloquent, and you could hardly have a better book than his Bampton Lectures for Sunday evening; but you might spare a few minutes for your son.”
“As many minutes or as many hours as you like, Jack,” answered his mother, as she closed the book. “My thoughts are too full of you to give themselves to any book that was ever written. My dear son, what can I say to you? Do you really mean to persist in this miserable alliance?”
“Oh, mother, how cruel you are even in your kindness! How cruel a mother’s love can be! It is not a miserable alliance—it is the marriage of true minds. Remember what your Shakespeare says, ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.’ Will you, mother, admit impediments here, where practically there is none?”
“Jack, Jack, love has made you blind. Is the existence of that wicked young man no impediment—a man who may at any day be tried for his life as a murderer?”
“Again, mother, I say he was no murderer. The utmost that can be urged against this wicked young man is that he was a hot-tempered athlete who killed a man in a scuffle. Let us forget his existence, if we can. There is nothing in this life more unlikely than that we shall ever hear of him again. From that night in the Venetian caffè he ceased to exist—at any rate for England and his kindred. Be sure, mother, that Harold Marchant will never be heard of again.”
“You believe what you wish to believe, Jack, and you forget the French proverb that nothing is so likely to happen as the unexpected.”
“No, I don’t, mother. That useful adage has been borne in upon me of late. But now, dearest and best, let us be at peace for ever upon this question. I mean to marry my beloved, and I mean you to love her, second only to Maud and me. She is ready to love you with all her heart—with all the stored-up feeling of those motherless years in which she has grown from child to woman, without the help of a mother’s love. You are not going to shut your heart against her, are you, mother?”
“No, Jack, not if she is to be your wife. I love you too well to withhold my love from your wife.”
“That’s my own true mother.”