Page:Life's little ironies (1894).pdf/75

The following December, a day or two before Christmas, Mrs. Fellmer and her son were walking up and down the broad gravel path which bordered the east front of the house. Till within the last half-hour the morning had been a drizzling one, and they had just emerged for a short turn before luncheon.

“You see, dear mother,” the son was saying, “it is the peouliarity of my position which makes her appear to me in auch a desirable light. When you consider how I have been crippled at starting, how my life has been maimed ; that I feel anything like publicity distasteful, that I have no political ambition, and that my chief aim and hope lie in the education of the little thing Annie has left me, you must see how desirable a wife like Mias Halbovough would be, to prevent my becoming a mere vegetable.”

“If you adore her, I suppose you must have her,” replied his mother, with dry indirectness. “ But you'll find that she will not be content to live on here as you do, giving her whole mind to a young child.”

“That's just where we differ. Her very disqualification, that of being a nobody, as you call it, is her recommendation in my eyes. Her lack of influential connections limite her ambition. From what I know of her, a life in this place is all that she would wish for. She would never care to go outside the park gates if it were necessary to stay within.”

“Being in love with her, Albert, and meaning to marry her, you invent your practical reasons to make the case respectable. Weil, do as you will; I have no authority over you, so why should you consult me! You mean to propose on this very occasion, no doubt. Don't you, now ?”