And she sank down on her chair and covered her face, and burst into angry weeping. It was not simple sorrow, but mortification, rage, disappointment--a combination of feelings which it was impossible for John to identify with his mother. She had been defending him but a moment before. It had given him a sense of the most exquisite relief to find her on his side. He had turned to her without doubt or fear, expecting that she would cry a little, perhaps, and lament over him, and be wistfully respectful of his doubts, and tender of his sufferings. And to see her confronting him, flushed, indignant, almost menacing! His consternation was too great for words. “Mother,” he said, faltering, “you are mistaken--indeed you are mistaken!” and stopped short, with mingled resentment and humiliation. Why should Kate be supposed to have anything to do with it? And yet in his heart he knew that she had a great deal to do with it. Her--but not her fortune, as his father thought. Curse her fortune! John, who had always been so gentle, walked up and down the room like a caged lion, with a hundred passions in his heart. He was wild with mortification, and with that sense of the intolerable which accompanies the first great contrariety of a life. Nothing (to speak of) had ever gone cross with him before. But now his mother herself had turned against him--could such a thing be possible?--and the solid earth had been rent away from under his feet. Neither of them knew how long it was before anything more was said. Mrs Mitford sobbed out her passion, and dried her tears, and remained silent; and so did John, till the air seemed to stir round him with wings and rustlings as of unseen spectators. It was only when it had become unbearable that he broke the silence. “Mother,” he said, with a voice which even to his own ears sounded harsh and strange, “you have always believed me till now. When I tell you that this has been in my heart ever since I left Oxford--and while I was at Oxford--and that I have always refrained from telling you, hoping that when the time of decision came I might feel differently--will you refuse to believe me _now_?” Mrs Mitford was incapable of making any reply. “Oh, John,” she said--“oh, my boy!” shaking her head mournfully, while the tears dropped from her eyes. She did not mean to imply that she would not believe him. Poor soul! she did not very well know what she meant, except utter confusion and misery; but that was the meaning which her gesture bore to him. “I have done nothing to deserve this,” he said, with indignation. “You have a right to be as severe upon me as you like for disobeying your wishes, but you have no right to disbelieve your son.”