"Because," says the old lady, with emotion, Mr. Brandon's image heaving up and down rather quicklier than usual upon her ample breast,—"because some instinct tells me that she has not had common compassion upon you."
"'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth;' in fact," answers Bob, with a sarcasm unusual to him, "you are forgetting, mother, how often you have impressed upon me that we are no longer under the Mosaic dispensation! But why should she have compassion on me, may I ask? In what way do I stand in need for it? I'm not a woman, thank God!"
She looks at him, intently, with a steadiness that disconcerts him. "Bob, can you look me in the face and tell me that you have not been unhappier since you knew Esther Craven than ever you were before in all your life?"
"I have," he answers, simply, "and happier too; so that makes it square."
Foiled in this direction, she varies her point of attack a little: "Can you look me in the face, and tell me that since your engagement she has behaved to you as a modest, honourable woman should behave to the man she has promised to marry?"
He casts his eyes down troubled, and begins to fidget with a dilapidated little Chelsea Cupid on the mantelshelf, too truthful to say "Yes," too generous to say "No."
"She is ready to fulfil her promise," he answers, evasively. "She is willing to marry me whenever I like, as I told you before—to-morrow! to-night! this instant, if I wish!"
"For a home, of course; one can understand that, in her situation," says his mother, in a tone of slighting pity.
Bob perceives, and is stung by it.
"No, not for a home!" he answers, indignantly. "Poor soul! she may have that without paying such a heavy toll for it."