“My dear boy,” she said tremulously, “don’t trifle with me—tell me her name.”
A strange smile came upon Harry’s lips. In his very soul he, too, was ashamed of the name by which some impish trick of fortune had shadowed his Margaret. An impulse came upon him to get it over at once; he felt that he was mocking both himself and his mother, and her, the most of all, who bore that terrible appellation. He burst into a harsh, coarse laugh, a bravado of which next moment he was heartily ashamed.
“Her name,” he said, with another outburst, “is—Mrs. Smith!”
“Good heavens, Harry!” cried Lady Augusta, with a violent start. Then she tried to take a little comfort from his laughter, and said, with a faint smile, though still trembling, “You are laughing at me, you unkind boy!”
“I am not laughing at all!” cried Harry, “except, indeed, at the misfortune which gave her such a name. It is one of Aunt Mary’s favourite jokes.” Then he changed his tone, and took his mother’s hand and put it up caressingly to his cheek to hide the hot flush that covered it. “Mother, you don’t know how I love her. She is the only woman I will ever marry, though I should live a hundred years.”
“Oh! my poor boy—my poor boy!” cried Lady Augusta. “This is all I wanted to make an end of me. I think my heart will break!”
“Why should your heart break?” said Harry, putting down her hand and looking half cynically at her. “What good will that do? Look here, mother. Something much more to the purpose will be to write to my father, and break the news quietly to him—gently, so as not to bother him, as I have done to you; you know how.”
“Break the news to him!” she said. “I have not yet realised it myself. Harry, wait a little. Why, she is not even——. Mrs. Smith! You mean that she is a widow, I suppose?”
“You did not think I could want to marry a wife, did you?” he growled. “What is the use of asking such useless questions? Of course she is a widow—with one little girl. There, now you know the worst!”
“A widow, with one little girl!”