“Anna thinks it would be the only thing to do. She thinks, Geoff, she says, it is--the youngest of the two.” Here Geoff, unable to quench entirely the traitor in him, blushed like a girl, growing red up to his hair under his mother’s jealous eyes. “This is mere folly,” he said, trying to laugh. “Why, I have only seen her twice.” “Sometimes that is enough,” Mrs Underwood said mournfully. “Things look so different at my time of life and yours. I dare say you think it is very fine to fall in love at first sight; but oh, when you think of it--on one side those that have loved you and cherished you all your life, on the other somebody you know nothing about--that you have only seen twice!” “My dear mother,” the young man said. He made this beginning as if he intended to follow it up with a warm disclaimer and protestation of his own superiority to any such youthful delusion. But when he had said these words he stopped short suddenly and said no more. His mother had her eyes fixed upon him, anxiously expecting to hear something in his defence; but when he thus broke down, and it appeared that he had no plea at all, no justification to offer, her heart sank within her. She stood by him for a minute waiting, and then she put her hand tremblingly upon his shoulder. “Have you nothing to say to me, Geoff?” “I don’t know what you would like me to say, mother,” he replied somewhat impatiently. “What you are speaking of is preposterous. What might have happened in happier circumstances I can’t tell--but that I should think of marrying anybody just now, and above all one of the people whose fortune we have taken from them----” “Geoff! we never meant to take anybody’s money. We never dreamt that it was not our own; we don’t know even yet,” said his mother, faltering. “No; we don’t know even yet; and perhaps I am wrong in urging you to a decision. Perhaps we ought to wait and see what evidence there is. It is a hard thing to contemplate, anyhow, mother.” “Oh, my dear! very hard, very hard! and if it separates you from me!” “I do not see how it can do that in any case,” he said coldly. It chilled him to think that her chief terror in the matter was lest there should be any opening of happiness to him in it. It was preposterous, as he had said; but still, was that the chief thing she feared--that he should have a life of his own, that he should be happy? It made him recoil a little from her. “Go to bed, mother; there is nothing that need disturb your rest, at least for to-night.” She would have stayed and questioned and groped into every corner of his heart, if she could, and protested that it was for him, not herself, that she feared anything; but Geoff was not so tractable as usual to-night. He opened the door for her, and kissed her and bade her good-night with something like a dismissal. Then Mrs Underwood perceived by a logic peculiar to herself that Anna was right, and that her worst fears were true. CHAPTER XI