"Well?" "Well! it's not well; there's nothing well about it! You shan't speak to me like this--I won't have it! Robert, I want you to promise that all shall be at an end between Miss Lindsay and you; she herself sees the matter in the proper light----" "Does that mean that you have been talking: to her?" "Certainly I have been talking to her; and I will say this, that she did not take long to see where her duty lay." "Is it possible that she took it for granted that I should behave like a blackguard--at my mother's bidding?" "Robert, how dare you!" "It is not I, mother, who dare; I dare not. I asked Miss Lindsay to be my wife when her father was alive, and a rich man and all was well with her. If, now that all is not well with her, I attempt to repudiate the solemn engagements into which I then entered----" "Fiddle-de-dee! solemn engagements indeed! You entered into no solemn engagements, and I'll take care you don't. Robert, you are the only creature I have left to love." "I don't see how that can be, since you have eight other children and a husband." "My boy, my boy, don't you be so cruel as to pretend that you don't understand! You're my youngest born, the child of my old age, my baby--you're dear to me in a special sense, as you know very well. If you marry this girl, who is not only penniless, but who is in honour bound to pay her father's debts, and who'll drag you down into the gutter, because your aunt will never give you another penny when she knows the facts, on the day of your marriage I'll commit suicide." "Mother!" "I will, so now you're warned; and she shall know why I do it. I'll not live to be mocked by all my children; I've had nine of them, as you say, and if not one of them will try to please his mother--then God help us mothers." The young man turned to the Earl. "Do you associate yourself, sir, with my mother in this matter?" "Certainly I do--most distinctly I do; with what she says respecting this young woman most emphatically I do; I can't conceive of a rational creature doing anything else. As matters have turned out the girl's impossible--absolutely out of the question. If you can't see it, Robert, you're a fool." "Thank you, sir." The young man regarded his plain-speaking sire with a wry little smile. "I think it probable that when you have thought things over, sir, you will modify your views; but while you hold them so warmly, plainly it is desirable that I should restrict myself to a bare announcement of the fact that they are not mine." He moved towards the window; his mother called out to him. "Robert, where are you going? You will return with us. We came in the landau; there is plenty of room. I beg you will give us your company; indeed, if it is not sufficient for a mother to beg of her son, then I insist upon your doing so." "Pardon me, mother, but I am not going to Holtye; I have taken a room at the 'Unicorn.'"