“I expect,” pursued Elisabeth calmly, “that you think I'm going too far—farther than I have any right to. But it's any mother's right to fight for her son's happiness, and I'm fighting for Tim's. Why won't you marry him, Sara?” The question flashed out suddenly.
“Because—why—oh, because I'm not in love with him.”
A gleam of rather sardonic mirth showed in Elisabeth's face.
“I wish,” she observed, “that we lived in the good old days when you could have been carried off by sheer force and compelled to marry him.”
Sara laughed outright.
“I really believe you mean it!” she said with some amusement.
Elisabeth nodded.
“I do. I shouldn't have hesitated.”
“And what about me? You wouldn't have considered my feelings at all in the matter, I suppose?” Sara was still smiling, yet she had a dim consciousness that, preposterous as it sounded, Elisabeth would have had no scruples whatever about putting such a plan into effect had it been in any way feasible.
“No.” Elisabeth replied with the utmost composure. “Tim comes first. But”—and suddenly her voice melted to an indescribable sweetness—“You would be almost one with him in my heart, because you had brought him happiness.” She paused, then launched her question with a delicate hesitancy that skillfully concealed all semblance of the probe. “Tell me—is there any one else who has asked of you what Tim asks? Perhaps I have come too late with my plea?”