'Mother, mother dear! I am awfully miserable; but I feel as if I could tell you how happy I am, now.'
And, without another word of preface, without a pause to hear her out, without even observing the bewildered look as of one stopped in mid-career with which she regarded him, Ned dashed into the story of his own love, of his despair and his joy. She listened to him with her blue eyes dilating, looking out of her pale face like stars out of a winter sky—suddenly stiffened back into a little silent stone-woman. She was bewildered at first and thrown off her balance. And then gradually, slowly, the new impatience and faith that had been born of love died in her, and the old, cold, patient toleration, the faint smile, came back. It was natural. His own affairs, of course, were the closest to him. He thought of his private story first, not of hers. She had never subjected herself to such a shock before, and did not know how hard it was to bear. Well! but what of that? That was her own folly, not any one else's. She had put aside her armour, thrown open her breast, for the first time; and if an arrow, barbed and sharp, was the first thing that came to it, that was but natural—it was her own fault. She sat, therefore, and listened with the faint smile even now stealing about her lips—a smile that was half at herself, half at human nature, thus once more, once again, proving itself. And Ned, who had felt so bitterly the absorption of his father and sister in their own affairs, their indifference to the feelings of others—Ned did the same. He slurred over the sacrifice which his mother, at no small cost, was bending her own will to make, and rewarded her by the story of his own boyish happiness—how Norah had cast him off once, how she loved him now. This was the best, the only return he could make to her. From her own serious, weighty purpose, which involved (she felt) so much, he led her aside to his love-tale, of which, for the moment at least, it was madness to expect that anything could come.
'But you don't say anything?' he said at last, half offended, when he had done—or rather when her failure of response had stopped the fulness of his speech.
'I don't know what I can say,' she answered, with a coldness which he felt at once. 'This seems scarcely the time—scarcely the moment—'
'Of course,' he said hurriedly, 'I do not expect nor hope that it can be very soon.'
'No one, I should think, would be so mad as to expect that,' said his mother; 'and these long, aimless engagements, without any visible end——'
'I do not see how my engagement can be thought aimless,' he said, growing hot.
'Not in your own mind, I suppose; but, so far as anything like marriage is concerned, considering the state of affairs generally, I do not see much meaning in it,' said Mrs Burton coldly. 'Your prospects are not brilliant. It was only last night, for instance, that you proposed to burden yourself with me.'
'Mother!'
'It is quite true. In answer to your grandfather's sensible question how I was to live, you answered: with you. Did you mean, upon some hypothetical engagement, whatever you may happen to get, to support a wife—and me?'