“Your mother, your mother? But you have a duty to me,” said Randall, more coldly. “Your mother must not bid you give me up: you have no right to obey. Ah! I see: I am dull and stupid; forgive me, Menie. You mean that your mother’s fortunes are changed. She has the more need of a son then; and my May Marion knows well, that to be her mother is enough for me--you understand me, Menie. This does not change our attachment, does not change our plans, our prospects, in the slightest degree. It may make it more imperative that your mother should live with us, but _you_ will think that no misfortune. Well, are we to have no more heroics now--nothing tragical--but only a little good sense and patience on all sides, and my Menie what she always is? Come, look up and tell me.” “I meant nothing heroic--nothing. What I said was not false, Randall,” said Menie, looking up with some fire. “If you think it was unreal, that I did not mean it--” “If you do not mean it now, is not that enough?” said Randall, smiling. “Let us talk of something less weighty. July says you do not look as you used to do; has this been weighing on your mind, Menie? But, indeed, you have not told me what the misfortune is.” “We knew it only to-day,” said Menie. Menie spoke very low, and was very much saddened and humbled, quite unable to make any defence against Randall’s lordly manner of setting her emotion aside. “My father’s successors were young men, and the price they paid for entering on his practice was my mother’s annuity. But now they are both gone; one died two years ago, the other only last week--and he has died very poor, and in debt, the lawyer writes; so that there is neither hope nor chance of having anything from those he leaves behind. So we have no longer an income; nothing now but my mother’s liferent in Burnside.” Menie Laurie did not know what poverty was. It was not any apprehension of this which drew from her eyes those few large tears. “Well, that will be enough for your mother,” said Randall. It was impossible for Menie to say a word or make an objection, so completely had he put her aside, and taken it for granted that his will should decide all. “Or if it was not enough, what then? Provision for the future lies with me--and you need not fear for me, Menie. I am not quarrelsome. You need not look so deprecating and frightened: you will find no disappointment in me.”