"So this, Arthur, is the reward you propose for all that has been done for you!—for the time, the thought, the money that has been showered upon you—"
He looked at her from under his eyebrows, unmoved.
"I should have remembered all that, mother, if you—Look here! Have you ever let me, in anything—for one day, one hour—call my soul my own—since I went into Parliament? It's true I deceived you about Enid. I was literally afraid to tell you—there! You've brought me to that! And when a man's afraid of a woman—it somehow makes a jelly of him—altogether. It was partly what made me run after Enid—at first—that I was doing something independent of you—something you would hate, if you knew. Beastly of me, I know!—but there it was. And then you arranged that meeting here, without so much as giving me a word's notice!—you told Page before you told me. And when I kicked—and told you about Enid—did you ever come afterward and talk to me nicely about her?—did you ever, even, consider for one moment what I told you?—that I was in love with her?—dead gone on her? Even if I was rude to you that day when you dragged it out of me, most mothers, I think, would have been sorry for a fellow—"
His voice suddenly broke; but he instantly recovered himself.
"Instead of that, mother—you only thought of how you could thwart and checkmate me—how you could get your way—and force me to give up mine. It was abominable of you to go and see Enid, without a word to me!—it was abominable to plot and plan behind my back, and then to force yourself on her and insult her to her face! Do you think a girl of any spirit whatever would put herself in your clutches after that? No!—she didn't want to come it too hard on you—that's her way!—so she made up some tale about Glenwilliam. But it's as plain as the nose in your face! You've ruined me!—you've ruined me!"
He began to walk furiously up and down, beside himself again with rage and pain.
Lady Coryston dropped into a chair. Her large, blanched face expressed a passion that even at this supreme moment, and under the sense of doom that was closing on her, she could not restrain.
"It is not I who have ruined you, Arthur—as you put it—though of course you're not ruined at all!—but your own wanton self-will. Are you really so lost to all decency—all affection—that you can speak to your mother like this?"
He turned and paused—to throw her an ugly look.
"Well—I don't know that I'm more of a brute than other men—but it's no good talking about affection to me—after this. Yes, I suppose you've been fond of me, mother, in your way—and I suppose I've been fond of you. But the fact is, as I told you before, I've stood in fear of you!—all my life—and lots of things you thought I did because I was fond of you, I did because I was a coward—a disgusting coward!—who ought to have been kicked. And that's the truth! Why, ever since I was a small kid—"