‘You are a fool!’ said her grandmother sternly.  ’And I have nothing more to say to you.  Go away, and send Maulevrier to me.’

Mary did not obey immediately.  She went over to her grandmother’s couch and knelt by her side, and kissed the poor maimed hand which lay on the velvet cushion.

‘Dear grandmother,’ she said gently.  ’I am very sorry to rebel against you.  But this is a question of life or death with me.  I am not like Lesbia.  I cannot barter love and truth for worldly advantage—­for pride of race.  Do not think me so weak or so vain as to be won by a few fine speeches from an adventurer.  Mr. Hammond is no adventurer, he has made no fine speeches—­but, I will tell you a secret, grandmother.  I have liked and admired him from the first time he came here.  I have looked up to him and reverenced him; and I must be a very foolish girl if my judgment is so poor that I can respect a worthless man.’

‘You are a very foolish girl,’ answered Lady Maulevrier, more kindly than she had spoken before, ’but you have been very good and dutiful to me since I have been ill, and I don’t wish to forget that.  I never said that Mr. Hammond was worthless; but I say that he is no fit husband for you.  If you were as yielding and obedient as Lesbia it would be all the better for you; for then I should provide for your establishment in life in a becoming manner.  But as you are wilful, and bent upon taking your own way—­well—­my dear, you must take the consequence; and when you are a struggling wife and mother, old before your time, weighed down with the weary burden of petty cares, do not say, “My grandmother might have saved me from this martyrdom."’

’I will run the risk, grandmother.  I will be answerable for my own fate.’

‘So be it, Mary.  And now send Maulevrier to me.’

Mary went down to the billiard room, where she found her brother and her lover engaged in a hundred game.

‘Take my cue and beat him if you can, Molly,’ said Maulevrier, when he had heard Mary’s message.  ’I’m fifteen ahead of him, for he has been falling asleep over his shots.  I suppose I am going to get a lecture.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Mary.

‘Well, my dearest, how did you fare in the encounter?’ asked Hammond, directly Maulevrier was gone.

’Oh, it was dreadful!  I made the most rebellious speeches to poor grandmother, and then I remembered her affliction, and I asked her to forgive me, and just at the last she was ever so much kinder, and I think that she will let me marry you, now she knows I have made up my mind to be your wife—­in spite of Fate.’

‘My bravest and best.’

’And do you know, Jack’—­she blushed tremendously as she uttered this familiar name—­’I have made a discovery!’

‘Indeed!’

’I find that I am to have five hundred a year when I am married.  It is not much.  But I suppose it will help, won’t it?  We can’t exactly starve if we have five hundred a year.  Let me see.  It is more than a pound a day.  A sovereign ought to go a long way in a small house; and, of course, we shall begin in a very wee house, like De Quincey’s cottage over there, only in London.’