“My son Stephen, Selina. Ste, Mrs. Radcliffe.”
Stephen Radcliffe for a moment forgot his sullenness and his temper. He did nothing but stare. Was his father playing a joke on him? He had pictured the new wife (though he knew not why) as a woman of mature age: this was a child. As she timidly held out the only hand she could extricate from the load of books, he saw the wedding-ring on her finger. Meeting her hand ungraciously and speaking never a word, he turned to the window again. Selina put the books down, to be disposed in their shelves later, and quitted the room.
“This is even worse folly than I dreamed of,” began Stephen, facing his father. “She’s nothing but a child.”
“She is close upon twenty.”
“Why, there may be children!” broadly roared out Stephen. “You must have been mad when you did such a deed as this.”
“Mad or sane, it’s done, Stephen. And I should do it again to-morrow without asking your leave. Understand that.”
Yes, it was done. Rattling the silver in his pockets, Stephen Radcliffe felt that, and that there was no undoing it. Here was this young step-mother planted down at the Torr; and if he and she could not hit it off together, it was he who would have to walk out of the house. For full five minutes Stephen mentally rehearsed all the oaths he remembered. Presently he spoke.
“It was a fair trick, wasn’t it, that you should forbid my marrying, and go and do the same thing yourself!”
“I did not object to your marrying, Ste: I objected to the girl. Gibbon’s daughter is not one to match with you. You are a Radcliffe.”
Stephen scoffed. Nobody had ever been able to beat into him any sense of self-importance. Pride of birth, pride in his family were elements unknown to Stephen’s nature. He had a great love of money to make up for it.