Mrs. Mayne sighed as she smoothed down her satin dress with her plump white hands; but she could not gainsay the truth of this speech: his father was right,—Dick’s mind was set on other things.
“I wish you would let him talk to you,” she began, timidly, remembering her promise. “Do, my dear; for I am sure Dick is very much in earnest.”
“So am I very much in earnest,” he returned, wrathfully; and his small eyes grew bright and irritable. “No, it is no use your looking at me in that way, Bessie. I am determined not to 317 allow that boy to ruin his prospects for life. He will thank me one day for being firm; and so will you, though you do turn against your own husband.”
This was too much for Mrs. Mayne’s affectionate nature to bear.
“Oh, Richard, how can you talk so? and I have been a good wife to you all these years!” And here the poor woman began to sob. “You might make allowance for a mother’s feelings; he is my boy as well as yours, and I would cut off my right hand to make him happy; and I do—I do think you are very hard upon him about Nan.”
Mr. Mayne stared at her in speechless amazement. Bessie, his long-suffering Bessie,—the wife of his bosom, over whom he had a right to tyrannize,—even she had turned against him, and had taken his son’s part. “Et tu, Brute!” he could have said, in his bitterness; but his wrath was too great.
“I tell you what,” he said, rising from the seat that was no longer restful to him, and pointing his finger at her, “you and your boy together will be the death of me.”
“Oh, Richard, how can you be so wicked?”
“Oh, I am wicked, am I? That is a nice wifely speech.”
“Yes, you are, when you say such things to me!” she returned, plucking up spirit that amazed herself afterwards. “If you do not know when you have a good wife and son, I am sorry for you. I say again, I think you are making a grievous mistake, Richard. Dick’s heart is set on the girl; and I don’t wonder at it, a dear pretty creature like that. And if you cross him, and set him wrong, you will have to answer to both of us for the consequences.” And then she, too, rose, trembling in every limb, and with her comely face very much flushed. Even a worm will turn, and Bessie Mayne had for once ventured to speak the truth to her husband.