“Of course she has got friends, if she’ll only take up with them as she ought to do. Why does she go on shilly-shallying with that young man, instead of closing upon it at once? If she did that she wouldn’t want such friends as Lady Ushant. Why did the girl come to you with all this instead of asking me?”
“There would be a little money wanted.”
“Money! Yes, I dare say. It’s very easy to want money but very hard to get it. If you send clients away out of the office with a flea in their ear I don’t see how she’s to have all manner of luxuries. She ought to have come to me.”
“I don’t see that at all, my dear.”
“If I’m to look after her she shall be said by me;—that’s all. I’ve done for her just as I have for my own and I’m not going to have her turn up her nose at me directly she wants anything for herself. I know what’s fit for Mary, and it ain’t fit that she should go trapesing away to Cheltenham, doing nothing in that old woman’s parlour, and losing her chances for life. Who is to suppose that Larry Twentyman will go on dangling after her in this way, month after month? The young man wants a wife, and of course he’ll get one.”
“You can’t make her marry the man if she don’t like him.”
“Like him! She ought to be made to like him. A young man well off as he is, and she without a shilling! All that comes from Ushanting.” It never occurred to Mrs. Masters that perhaps the very qualities that had made poor Larry so vehemently in love with Mary had come from her intercourse with Lady Ushant. “If I’m to have my way she won’t go a yard on the way to Cheltenham.”
“I’ve told her she may go,” said Mr. Masters, whose mind was wandering back to old days—to his first wife, and to the time when he used to be an occasional guest in the big parlour at Bragton. He was always ready to acknowledge to himself that his present wife was a good and helpful companion to him and a careful mother to his children; but there were moments in which he would remember with soft regret a different phase of his life. Just at present he was somewhat angry, and resolving in his own mind that in this case he would have his own way.
“Then I shall tell her she mayn’t,” said Mrs. Masters, with a look of dogged determination.
“I hope you will do nothing of the kind, my dear. I’ve told her that she shall have a few pounds to get what she wants, and I won’t have her disappointed.” After that Mrs. Masters bounced out of the room, and made herself very disagreeable indeed over the tea-things.
The whole household was much disturbed that day. Mrs. Masters said nothing to Mary about Lady Ushant all the morning, but said a great deal about other things. Poor Mary was asked whether she was not ashamed to treat a young man as she was treating Mr. Twentyman. Then again it was demanded of her whether she thought it right that all the house should be knocked about for her. At dinner Mrs. Masters would hardly speak to her husband but addressed herself exclusively to Dolly and Kate. Mr. Masters was not a man who could, usually, stand this kind of thing very long and was accustomed to give up in despair and then take himself off to the solace of his office-chair. But on the present occasion he went through his meal like a Spartan, and retired from the room without a sign of surrender. In the afternoon about five o’clock Mary watched her opportunity and found him again alone. It was incumbent on her to reply to Lady Ushant. Would it not be better that she should write and say how sorry she was that she could not come? “But I want you to go,” said he.
“Oh, papa;—I cannot bear to cause trouble.”
“No, my dear; no; and I’m sure I don’t like trouble myself. But in this case I think you ought to go. What day has she named?” Then Mary declared that she could not possibly go so soon as Lady Ushant had suggested, but that she could be ready by the 18th of December. “Then write and tell her so, my dear, and I will let your mother know that it is fixed.” But Mary still hesitated, desiring to know whether she had not better speak to her mother first. “I think you had better write your letter first,”—and then he absolutely made her write it in the office and give it to him to be posted. After that he promised to communicate to Reginald Morton what had been done.
The household was very much disturbed the whole of that evening. Poor Mary never remembered such a state of things, and when there had been any difference of opinion, she had hitherto never been the cause of it. Now it was all owing to her! And things were said so terrible that she hardly knew how to bear them. Her father had promised her the twenty pounds, and it was insinuated that all the comforts of the family must be stopped because of this lavish extravagance. Her father sat still and bore it, almost without a word. Both Dolly and Kate were silent and wretched. Mrs. Masters every now and then gurgled in her throat, and three or four times wiped her eyes. “I’m better out of the way altogether,” she said at last, jumping up and walking towards the door as though she were going to leave the room—and the house, forever.
“Mamma,” said Mary, rising from
