“Shut the door, Douglas!” she commanded in her usual frigid manner, “I have something to tell you.  Come over here and sit down.”

“Yes, mother, all right,” but nevertheless he remained standing; “what is it?”

She cleared her throat and replied in her sharp metallic voice, “Mr. Levison and I have at last made up our minds to be married; you see, we have no one to consider but ourselves.”  This announcement was followed by a blank and paralysed silence.

“He is absolutely devoted to me,” resumed Mrs. Shafto, “and is a wealthy man and, as you know, I was never accustomed to poverty.  The wedding will take place in six weeks.  Well, why do you stand glowering there?” she demanded impatiently.  “What have you got to say?”

“I have got to say,” replied Douglas, then his voice broke a little, “that I don’t see how you can do it, or put that fat Jew tradesman into my father’s place!”

“Your father!” she screamed passionately, and a scar on her chin showed white against a suffused complexion; “don’t talk to me of your father.  Before we were married, he often came to my uncle’s shop, and talked to me about books—­I got up Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates, bits of Browning, and Lamb’s Essays, and Omar Khayyam.  I had to study them in my own room at night, so as to make him think I was well educated and shared his tastes; but I did not; no,” she cried, with a stamp of her foot, “I hated his tastes!  Aristotle and Plato, yes, and Shakespeare—­dull to the last degree, but I liked him:  he was so handsome, so thoughtful, such a gentleman.  And I believed that as he was madly in love I could easily twist him round to my way of thinking—­but I was mistaken!” She paused, momentarily out of breath, then resumed:  “He soon found me out and was sick of me in three weeks.  He disliked dances, theatres, and smart society, and buried me alive in the country.  We had nothing in common; he was just a bookworm, with a sarcastic tongue, who left me a beggar!  Now I am free, I am going to be a rich woman, marry a man who understands me—­and lead a new life.”

“I see you are easily satisfied,” remarked her son.

“I am; and although Mr. Levison is a Jew tradesman, as you have remarked in your nasty sneering way, he has been generous enough to offer you an opening as his assistant.  He will take you into the shop and pay you two hundred a year.”

“No, thank you,” replied Douglas stiffly; “I know nothing about old furniture.”

“Only old family, I suppose!  Well, you might do worse; and when you marry Cossie, as is probable, I will make you a small allowance.”

(Shafto had relinquished his income of a hundred and fifty a year, and made it over to his mother legally, immediately he had come of age.)

“I haven’t the smallest idea of marrying Cossie, or anyone else,” he answered, with white-faced decision.

“Well, she, and indeed they all, expect it.”