"I shall marry her, of course. He will divorce her, and we shall be married." He was trembling with indignation: "I will not submit to this questioning," he said. He got up and opened the door. "Will you leave me, please?" he said, frigidly. But she did not rise. She was bending forward, her hands gripped between her knees. Then, slowly, she raised her bowed head and there was authority in her face. "Wait. You must listen. You owe it to me to listen." He hesitated. "I owe it to myself not to listen to such words as you used a moment ago." He was standing before her, his arms folded across his breast; there was no son's hand put out now to touch hers. "I won't repeat them," she said, "although I don't know any others that can be used when a man takes another man's wife, or when a married woman goes away with a man who is not her husband." "You drag me into an abominable position in making me even defend myself. But I will defend myself. I will explain to you that, as things are, Elizabeth cannot get a divorce from Blair Maitland. But if she leaves him for me, he will divorce her; and we can marry." "Perhaps he will not divorce her." "You mean out of revenge? I doubt if even he could be such a brute as that." "There have been such brutes." "Very well; then we will do without his divorce! We will do without the respectability that you think so much of." "Nobody can do without it very long," she said, mildly. "But we won't argue about respectability; and I won't even ask you whether you will marry her, if she gets her divorce." His indignation paused in sheer amazement. "No," he said. "I should hardly think that even you would venture to ask me such a question!" "I will only ask you, my son, if you have thought how you would smirch her name by such a process of getting possession of her?" "Oh," he said, despairingly, "what is the use of talking about it? I can't make you understand!" "Have you considered that you will ruin Elizabeth?" she insisted. "You may call happiness 'ruin,' if you want to, mother. We don't--she and I." "I suppose you wouldn't believe me if I told you it wouldn't be happiness?"