"Has yours so completely taken command of affairs?"
"I'm afraid—it has."
"Yet—you stood up to your mother?"
"Oh, I did—as I've never done yet. But afterwards I realised—it was only skin deep. She said ... things I can't repeat; but equally ... I can't forget; things about ... possible children...."
The blood flamed in Roy's sallow face. "Confound her! What does she know about possible children?"
"More than I do, I suppose," Rose admitted, with a pathetic half smile. "Anyway, after that, she refused to countenance the engagement—the wedding——"
Roy sat suddenly forward, scorn and anger in his eyes.
"Refused——! After the infernal fuss she made over me, because my father happened to have a title and a garden. And now——" his hand closed on the edge of the table. "I'm considered a pariah—am I?—simply on account of my lovely little mother—the guardian angel of us all!"
His blaze of wrath, his low passionate tone, startled her to silence. He had spoken so seldom of his mother since the first occasion, that—although she knew—she had far from plumbed the height and depth of his worship. And instinctively she thought, 'I should have been jealous into the bargain.'
But Roy had room just then for one consideration only.