“Free, my dear boy?” exclaimed Mr. Price. “I confess I don’t understand you. Why are you not so? You are of age, your own master to a sufficient extent to marry when and where you choose. It is all very well to think of pleasing your mother, but you and she have not lived so much together as to be in any way dependent on each other in the way that some mothers and sons are. Probably Lady Severn might not consider Miss Freer suitable as to position and all that. But no one can look at her and not see that she is a lady! And beyond that I do not see that Lady Severn is called on to interfere.” “Nor do I,” said Ralph, “but she thinks she is. But don’t mistake me. It is no over regard to my mother’s prejudices that is influencing me. It is sheer necessity. This is the actual state of the case, Mr. Price—I am utterly and entirely dependent upon my mother. Not one shilling, not one farthing of my own do I either possess at present, or have I any certainty of ever possessing. How then can I think myself free to marry; to involve another in such galling dependence on my mother’s caprices? Though, truly speaking, hitherto the dependence has not galled me particularly. It affected no one but myself, and till now it never occurred to me how terribly it might complicate matters.” Mr. Price stopped and looked at the speaker with an air of extreme bewilderment. “Even now, my dear Ralph,” he said, “I don’t clearly follow you. In what is your position different from your brother’s? John married to please himself. As far as I remember Lady Severn did not particularly fancy the Bruce connection, but then she was too sensible to oppose it; knowing as she did that in the end all would be his. You mean, I suppose, that the amount of your yearly allowance depends on her goodwill? But if I remember rightly this was settled permanently when John came of age; and I never before doubted that you were now in receipt, as a matter of course, or what had been his. Besides, in any case the whole must be yours eventually. It is only a question of a little time! You seem to be forgetting the entail.”