He rose in impatience, as was generally the result of these conversations, and paced the long dining-room from end to end. Then he returned to where she sat with her back to the fire, which she still insisted on, though it was now May. He stood half behind her, leaning on the mantelpiece. It was better, perhaps, than being face to face.
‘What I mean,’ he said, ‘is, that if your comfort so depends upon this woman—whom I don’t pretend to like, as you know; but that does not matter: if your comfort depends upon her, mother, or if she is some pleasure to you, it would certainly be better to have her here, living with you, than skulking to and fro like a——’
‘Lover!’ she said again, with a laugh to madden him. Then she turned round upon him, as he stood with his head bent regarding the glow of the fire. ‘I don’t say that you’ve made your offer an insult, Leo, which would be the truth—but what is the cause of such a change? You have a motive. Ah! I think I see it!’
He looked up with a more profoundly clouded brow than had ever been seen in Leo before.
‘What do you see?’ he said.
She laughed again. Any one who has ever listened to the dreadful endless tinkling of an electric bell at a foreign railway station will understand how Mrs. Swinford laughed, and how it affected the nerves of those who listened.
‘Ah! I think I see!’ she repeated.
Perhaps it was because he was used to these agaceries that he bore it so well. What tempests of impatience were in his heart! He did not move. He remained as still as if he had been made in bronze, leaning against the mantelpiece till the laugh ceased. Then he said coldly:
‘I have expressed myself willing to give up what may be my own prejudice on your account, mother. I think it would be more dignified, more fit and becoming for you that your visitor did not come by stealth. What motive you credit me with I can’t tell. If you do not think fit to adopt my suggestion, so be it; but at least let her come openly, not by stealth.’
The tinkling began again with that supreme power of exasperation, and she said amid her laughing, every word coming tinkling out: