"Oh, Sonia's too young, and speaking as her mother—my God, I thought that ullage was kept for penny novelettes! The girl of the present day.... Well, the long and the short of it was—I didn't mean to—but I told her Sonia and I were engaged. That gave her something to think about, George."
He strode fiercely across the lawn with his hands clasped Napoleonically behind his back.
"What did she say?" I asked, hurrying to overtake him.
"Wouldn't hear of it, don't you know?" he answered mimickingly. "We were a pair of children, don't you know? I'd behaved scandalously in mentioning such a thing, it was monstrous; what had I got to support her on? It was all her fault for ever letting Sonia go to Oxford, young men were not to be trusted, and after the years she'd known me, don't you know?" He blew a long breath. "She couldn't have said much more if we'd eloped."
"Well, what's going to happen now?"
He flung his hands out in wild gesticulation, and his black eyes were round and hot with angry surprise.
"She declined to recognize the engagement and told me I was to consider it off," he said. "I told her I proposed to marry Sonia. 'That is for us to decide!'" He clutched my arm and marched me the length of the lawn. "George, she's getting damnably pompous since they made Dainton a bart. We seemed to have reached a bit of an impasse. 'I don't recognize even an understanding,' she said, 'and I shall not permit Sonia to do so. If you persist in this—nonsense, my husband and I shall have to consider whether it is advisable for you and Sonia to have any opportunities of meeting, don't you know? If you will take my advice....' Pah! And then she handed it out. I must think of my career, I was a mere boy; you needed to be married to appreciate that marriage was an expensive luxury...."
"You seem to have taken it in the neck, Raney," I said as he choked and grew silent in his disgust.
"Pretty fairly. I'm not to write. I'm honour-bound not to mention the subject to Sonia on pain of having the door shut in my face next time. 'Of course, we shouldn't like that. You're an old friend. Perhaps if you had sisters of your own, don't you know. She started to get patronizing, George, so I asked her to tell me whether she admitted me to the house because I was fit to be admitted, or out of pity because I hadn't a home of my own and was a bastard——"