“Do!” she screamed. “What could you do? You could have remembered your honour! You could have remembered your blood! You could have remembered your duty!” Then she bade him leave her, and after an hour passed in thought she sent for Bessy. “I have had my son with me,” she said, sitting bolt upright in her bed, looking awful in her wanness, speaking with low, studied, harsh voice, with her two hands before her on the counterpane. “I have had my son with me and he has told me.” Bessy felt that she was trembling. She was hardly able to support herself. She had not a word to say. The sick old woman was terrible in her severity. “Is it true?”
“Yes, it is true,” whispered Bessy.
“And this is to be my return?”
“Oh, my dearest, my darling, oh, my aunt, dear, dearest, dearest aunt! Do not speak like that! Do not look at me like that! You know I love you. Don’t you know I love you?” Then Bessy prostrated herself on the bed, and getting hold of the old woman’s hand covered it with kisses. Yes, her aunt did know that the girl loved her, and she knew that she loved the girl perhaps better than any other human being in the world. The eldest son had become estranged from her. Even Philip had not been half so much to her as this girl. Bessy had wound herself round her very heartstrings. It made her happy even to sit and look at Bessy. She had denied herself all pretty things; but this prettiest of all things had grown up beneath her eyes. She did not draw away her hand; but, while her hand was being kissed, she made up her mind that she would do her duty.
“Of what service will be your love,” she said, “if this is to be my return?” Bessy could only lie and sob and hide her face. “Say that you will give it up.” Not to say that, not to give him up, was the only resolution at which Bessy had arrived. “If you will not say so, you must leave me, and I shall send you word what you are to do. If you are my enemy you shall not remain here.”
“Pray—pray do not call me an enemy.”
“You had better go.” The woman’s voice as she said this was dreadful in its harshness. Then Bessy, slowly creeping down from the bed, slowly slunk out of the room.
V
How Bessy Pryor Ceased to Be a Young Lady of Importance
When the old woman was alone she at once went to work in her own mind resolving what should be her course of proceeding. To yield in the matter, and to confirm the happiness of the young people, never occurred to her. Again and again she repeated to herself that she would do her duty; and again and again she repeated to herself that in allowing Philip and Bessy to come together she had neglected her duty. That her duty required her to separate them, in spite of their love, in spite of their engagement, though all the happiness of their lives might depend upon it, she did not in the least doubt. Duty is duty. And it was her duty to aggrandise the house of Launay, so that the old autocracy of the land might, so far as in her lay, be preserved. That it would be a good and pious thing to do—to keep them apart, to force Philip to marry the girl in Cornwall, to drive Bessy into Mr. Morrison’s arms, was to her so certain that it required no further thought. She had never indulged herself. Her life had been so led as to maintain the power of her own order, and relieve the wants of those below her. She had done nothing for her own pleasure. How should it occur to her that it would be well for her to change the whole course of her life in order that she might administer to the joys of a young man and a young woman?
It did not occur to her to do so. Lying thus all alone, white, sick, and feeble, but very strong of heart, she made her resolutions. As Bessy could not well be sent out of the house till a home should be provided for her elsewhere, Philip should be made to go. As that was to be the first step, she again sent for Philip that day. “No, mother; not while you are so ill.” This he said in answer to her first command that he should leave Launay at once. It had not occurred to him that the house in which he had been born and bred, the house of his ancestors, the house which he had always supposed was at some future day to be his own, was not free to him. But, feeble as she was, she soon made him understand her purpose. He must go—because she ordered him, because the house was hers and not his, because he was no longer welcome there as a guest unless he would promise to abandon Bessy. “This is tyranny, mother,” he said.
“I do not mean to argue the question,” said Mrs. Miles, leaning back among the pillows, gaunt, with hollow cheeks, yellow with her long sickness, seeming to be all eyes as she looked at him. “I tell you that you must go.”
“Mother!”
Then, at considerable length, she explained her intended arrangements. He must go, and live upon the very modest income which she proposed. At any rate he must go, and go at once. The house was hers, and she would not have him there. She would have no one in the house who disputed her will. She had been an overindulgent mother to him, and this had been the return made to her! She had condescended
