“Dear me!” said Miss Anna, “I thought it was the height of purity and simplicity to marry early; I have always been told so. Some French young men, who you know are the types of everything that is improper, can’t be got to marry. But Geoff, being the best of good boys, of course will want to marry as soon as possible; and here is a capital chance for him. That was my plan, Mary--if the worst comes to the worst. If you have a better, of course I have nothing to say.” Mrs Underwood sat all limp and downfallen, every line of her showing the droop of dismay and depression which her sister’s words, spoken in mere mischief--for the idea of Milly, though it had glanced across her mind, had gone no farther--had produced. “I----” she faltered, “Anna--I have got no plan. How should I have any plan? If they have a right to--the money, we shall have to give it up to them. And we will have to give up our pretty house, and live in--the poorest way. He says, Never mind, dear boy. He will work for us, he will never forsake us, Anna! Now you will see what my Geoff is made of. He has the best heart; but it will be a dreadful change, a dreadful change for him--he that has been used to have everything he wanted all his life.” “And you will rather let him fall into poverty, and be compelled to work, and have us two old women hanging upon him and cramping him--than save his share of the money for him and get him a nice young wife? That’s what mothers are! I have always said, when they made such a fuss about their children, it was themselves they were thinking of. Now, what concerns me,” said Miss Anna with only the malicious gleam in her eyes to contradict her dignified assumption of superior virtue, “what concerns me is Geoff’s real advantage, not the selfish wish of keeping him for ever at my side.” Mrs Underwood’s countenance fell more and more. She looked haggard in the sudden severity of the conflict set up within her. “I--thinking of myself?” she said, almost weeping. But the accusation was too terrible to be met with mere tears, which are fit only for lesser matters. She gazed at her sister with large round eyes full of wretchedness. No crime in the world was so dreadful to her as this of thinking of one’s self; it is the thing of all others which cuts a virtuous Englishwoman to the heart. “For Geoff’s good, you know, you know, Anna,” she cried, “I would submit to anything. I would go to the stake; I would give myself to be cut in pieces.” “Nobody is the least likely to cut you in pieces, my dear,” said Miss Anna coolly. “The stake is not an English institution. It is easy to promise things that never will be asked from you. The question is, will you let Geoff be happy, poor boy, in his own way?”