‘I have no desire to be disagreeable, mother—you have Artémise.’
‘Ah, Artémise! Yes, fate for once has been a little favourable to me. To keep me from dying of England, and your village, and all the exciting circumstances of my life. I have Artémise—that is occasionally. You know that I am not permitted to have her here.’
‘Mother!’ he said; then subduing himself, ‘You are very much attached to this woman, who has never done anything but harm, so far as I know.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘and what then? Is it not permitted to me to love as well as to hate? Artémise is the nearest to me in blood of any one in the world.’
‘You forget your son, it appears.’
‘My son—ah, that is a different matter. Sons have a way of being in opposition to their mothers. Besides, isn’t there a high authority which says that a mother is no relation, so to speak—an accident? It is so in English law.’
‘English law has little to do with you and me, or any law. Mother, if you prefer this Artémise to every one, why have her pay you visits clandestinely like——’
‘Like a lover!’ she said, with her tinkling laugh. ‘Well, say she is my lover and I like it; have it so.’
‘Such a simile is insulting,’ he said. ‘I resent for you that you should even yourself say it.’
‘Ah, but I do not resent; I like the simile. The thing itself might not be so impossible. But you are a Puritan, Leo, like your father. I have tried to prevent it, but one cannot stop the course of nature. Fortunately, my own constitution is not so.’