‘Ah,’ said Lady William, with a laugh, ‘you pay me back in my own coin.’
‘Rather,’ he said in a changed tone, ‘let us say that it was this. We must, I suppose, go to London next month—though my mother does not seem to care for it now as I thought she would. However, we shall go; and why should not you come too? Come with us; take Miss Mab where you please, and come back when you please. It would obviate all the difficulties you were speaking of, and secure all the—— What! You will not listen to such a simple suggestion as that?’
There had been a great many exclamations on Lady William’s lips as he went on, but she had smothered them one by one till it was impossible to keep silence longer. ‘With your mother?’ she said, almost under her breath.
‘Well: I should like it, oh, a great deal better, if it were with me; but you think of me as if I were a cabbage, and my mother was your friend—was she not your friend?—and I am your servant—to mount behind your carriage, if you like.’
‘Do not speak nonsense, Leo; you are my very kind friend, and the greatest acquisition, and if you had been going to town with your wife instead of your mother—— It is not indispensable, don’t you know, that old friends should continue friends for ever. Your mother was very good to me once—that is, I believe, for a time: but it would do no good to go into those old questions. She would not suffer me with her, nor would I—— No, no; forgive me. That does not mean necessarily any harm, does it? that we do not now—see things—exactly in the same light——’
‘Then that is settled,’ he said gloomily, ‘so far as my mother is concerned; as for me, though, you call me a friend and all that——’
‘My dear boy,’ said Lady William, ‘you don’t imagine for a moment, I hope, that I would let you pay my expenses—for the benefit of Mab?’
He paused again, gazing at her, saying nothing; then threw up his hands with an impatient sigh.
‘And yet friendship is supposed to be something more than words,’ he said.
‘There is one thing that friendship is not,’ said Lady William; ‘at least, in England, Leo. It is not money. When that comes in it is supposed to spoil all.’