Lady Flower was once more sitting in her boudoir at Barton Hall with her son before her. She had made the mistake then of sneering at Mary's mother, and although in this case it was unlikely that Mary would take matters into her own hand, it would be imprudent to run the risk of her doing so. With experience of a similar situation she ought to be able this time to have her own way. The old lady looked at Mary with an unwonted warmth of affection: Mary was Edward's daughter. The fact seemed to strike her for the first time. Edward's daughter ... Edward who was drowned twenty years ago. Poor Edward, so like his mother! And there was Mary holding her hands just as he had held them on that June afternoon, the day before he married and tore himself forever from the bosom of family life, as perhaps she herself might have held her hands fifty years ago if she had had to oppose the wishes of that stern old general who fought at Waterloo or of that dainty mother who bred in exile had yet kept about her the remote grace and grandeur of the _ancien régime_. "It is not that he is of humble birth," she began to explain. "A Frenchman can surmount that disadvantage more easily than an Englishman, at any rate in England. But he has no money, and so far as I can gather no immediate prospects of ever having any money. Even if I were disposed to give you such a dowry as would enable you to indulge yourself in the luxury of marriage with a poor man, I should not permit myself to do so. For I should be wrong. Few men have the moral strength to live decently upon their wives. I know you will think that this is only the opinion of a cynical old woman, and I should be sorry if at your age you thought differently. But at my age one is no longer shocked by the nakedness of truth; at my age we begin to return to the shamelessness of childhood. How your dear grandfather would have disliked that last remark of mine. He had such a profound belief in old age. Any religious feelings he had, all centered round his respect for the age of God. Your poor grandfather ... dear me, I am going back into the past instead of grappling with the present." Mary had been listening to her grandmother in astonishment. She had expected a fierce and bitter opposition, which she had promised herself to defy; but it seemed that the old lady was going to argue with her, and that would be disconcerting. Grandmother's arguments were always so difficult to answer. "I think perhaps I won't talk about this business any more to-day," Grandmamma was saying. "I have to make up my mind whether or not I will tell you something. Meanwhile, may I ask you not to see the young man until I have decided what to do?"