‘Ah, Artémise! Yes, fate for once has been a little favourable to me. To keep me from dying of England, and your village, and all the exciting circumstances of my life. I have Artémise--that is occasionally. You know that I am not permitted to have her here.’ ‘Mother!’ he said; then subduing himself, ‘You are very much attached to this woman, who has never done anything but harm, so far as I know.’ ‘Well,’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘and what then? Is it not permitted to me to love as well as to hate? Artémise is the nearest to me in blood of any one in the world.’ ‘You forget your son, it appears.’ ‘My son--ah, that is a different matter. Sons have a way of being in opposition to their mothers. Besides, isn’t there a high authority which says that a mother is no relation, so to speak--an accident? It is so in English law.’ ‘English law has little to do with you and me, or any law. Mother, if you prefer this Artémise to every one, why have her pay you visits clandestinely like----’ ‘Like a lover!’ she said, with her tinkling laugh. ‘Well, say she is my lover and I like it; have it so.’ ‘Such a simile is insulting,’ he said. ‘I resent for you that you should even yourself say it.’ ‘Ah, but I do not resent; I like the simile. The thing itself might not be so impossible. But you are a Puritan, Leo, like your father. I have tried to prevent it, but one cannot stop the course of nature. Fortunately, my own constitution is not so.’ He rose in impatience, as was generally the result of these conversations, and paced the long dining-room from end to end. Then he returned to where she sat with her back to the fire, which she still insisted on, though it was now May. He stood half behind her, leaning on the mantelpiece. It was better, perhaps, than being face to face. ‘What I mean,’ he said, ‘is, that if your comfort so depends upon this woman--whom I don’t pretend to like, as you know; but that does not matter: if your comfort depends upon her, mother, or if she is some pleasure to you, it would certainly be better to have her here, living with you, than skulking to and fro like a----’ ‘Lover!’ she said again, with a laugh to madden him. Then she turned round upon him, as he stood with his head bent regarding the glow of the fire. ‘I don’t say that you’ve made your offer an insult, Leo, which would be the truth--but what is the cause of such a change? You have a motive. Ah! I think I see it!’ He looked up with a more profoundly clouded brow than had ever been seen in Leo before. ‘What do you see?’ he said. She laughed again. Any one who has ever listened to the dreadful endless tinkling of an electric bell at a foreign railway station will understand how Mrs. Swinford laughed, and how it affected the nerves of those who listened. ‘Ah! I think I see!’ she repeated.