He made no answer. A hot flush of mingled anger and pain came over him; he was wrong somehow; he did not quite see how. He had missed the right way of making his announcement, but still it was not his fault. He could not see how he was to blame.
'You must not be surprised in these circumstances if I cannot make any very warm congratulations,' she added. 'Make your mind easy, however, Ned. I never intended to be a burden on you; but even without that——'
'What have I done, mother, that you should speak to me so?' he cried. 'You were so different just now. It is not for Norah's sake? No one could dislike Norah. What have I done?'
'Nothing,' she said; and then, with that faintest smile, 'you have acted according to your nature, Ned—like the rest. I have no reason to complain.'
Then there was a pause. He was a generous, tender-hearted boy, full of love and sympathy; but he had never so much as imagined, could not imagine, the state of feeling his mother had been in—and, accordingly, could not understand where he was wrong. Wrong somehow, unknowingly, unintentionally—puzzled, affronted, sore at heart—he went away from her. Was it mere caprice on her part? What was it? So it happened that the boy put his foot upon his mother's very heart; and then strained all his faculties, anxiously, affectionately, to find out what had made her countenance change, and could not, with all his efforts, discover what it was.
The smile remained on Mrs Burton's face when she was left alone. He had declined to hear her decision about the settlement. Was it not natural that she should reconsider it, now that she found how little interest he took in the matter? But it is easier to let that intruder Love, who disorders reason, into a woman's heart than to turn him out again. She did again another novel thing; she made a compromise. She sent for her father at once, and entered into the matter with him. 'I allow that all you say is perfectly just,' she said; 'but this is, partly, a matter of feeling, papa.' She smiled at herself as she said it, but yet did say it, without flinching. 'I will keep a portion of my settlement—say half. It is, as you said, the only thing I have to depend on.'
'My dear,' said poor Mr Baldwin, 'of course you have always me to depend on. You are my only child. What I have must come to you, Clara.'
'But I don't want it to come to me, papa.'
'No, that I am sure you don't; but what is the use of my money to me, but to make my child and her children comfortable—that is excepting, Clara—always excepting what I feel bound to do—what I have always done—in the cause of—God. But, all the same, I cannot approve of any sacrifice of your rights.'
'I would rather not say any more about it,' she said.