Everet Mapleson’s brow darkened.
“I am going home, anyhow,” he said, doggedly.
“It will be a wild-goose chase, I warn you,” returned his mother.
“I cannot help it. I shall go mad if I sit idly down, and Gladys is lost to me forever,” he retorted, with quivering lips.
Mrs. Mapleson seemed very unhappy.
She loved her son as she loved no one else in the world, and she could not bear to think that he had learned to love unwisely, and was risking his future happiness in pursuit of an ignis fatuus.
She did not believe he would ever win Gladys Huntress. The young girl’s face had haunted her ever since she had seen her with her lover, in the museum at Yale, and she knew, by the way she had looked up into Geoffrey’s eyes, that she loved him with her whole soul, and that no dishonor, save that of his own making, would ever alienate her from him.
“Oh, Everet, pray give up this foolish infatuation,” she pleaded, laying her hand beseechingly on his arm.
“Foolish infatuation, indeed!” he retorted, with an angry flush. “What can you know about it—you who never knew what it was to love a man as I love this peerless girl?”
Mrs. Mapleson crimsoned to her brow, then grew white as the snowy lace about her neck; her lips quivered painfully, and hot tears rushed to her eyes.