GERALD.  I believe you implicitly, darling.  But do you happen to know me through and through, and in and out, all my past and present doings, mother?  Have you a secret access to my room, and a spy-hole, and all those things?  This is uncomfortably thrilling.  You take on a new lustre.

MRS. BARLOW.  Your memoirs wouldn’t make you famous, my son.

GERALD.  Infamous, dear?

MRS. BARLOW.  Good heavens, no!  What a lot you expect from your very mild sins!  You and this young woman have lived together, then?

GERALD.  Don’t say “this young woman,” mother dear—­it’s slightly vulgar.  It isn’t for me to compromise Anabel by admitting such a thing, you know.

MRS. BARLOW.  Do you ask me to call her Anabel?  I won’t.

GERALD.  Then say “this person,” mother.  It’s more becoming.

MRS. BARLOW.  I didn’t come to speak to you, Gerald.  I know you.  I came to speak to this young woman.

GERALD.  “Person,” mother.—­Will you curtsey, Anabel?  And I’ll twist my handkerchief.  We shall make a Cruikshank drawing, if mother makes her hair a little more slovenly.

MRS. BARLOW.  You and Gerald were together for some time?

GERALD.  Three years, off and on, mother.

MRS. BARLOW.  And then you suddenly dropped my son, and went away?

GERALD.  To Norway, mother—­so I have gathered.

MRS. BARLOW.  And now you have come back because that last one died?

GERALD.  Is he dead, Anabel?  How did he die?

ANABEL.  He was killed on the ice.

GERALD.  Oh, God!

MRS. BARLOW.  Now, having had your fill of tragedy, you have come back to be demure and to marry Gerald.  Does he thank you?

GERALD.  You must listen outside the door, mother, to find that out.

MRS. BARLOW.  Well, it’s your own affair.

GERALD.  What a lame summing up, mother!—­quite unworthy of you.

ANABEL.  What did you wish to say to me, Mrs. Barlow?  Please say it.

MRS. BARLOW.  What did I wish to say!  Ay, what did I wish to say!  What is the use of my saying anything?  What am I but a buffoon and a slovenly caricature in the family?

GERALD.  No, mother dear, don’t climb down—­please don’t.  Tell Anabel what you wanted to say.

MRS. BARLOW.  Yes—­yes—­yes.  I came to say—­don’t be good to my son—­ don’t be too good to him.

GERALD.  Sounds weak, dear—­mere contrariness.

MRS. BARLOW.  Don’t presume to be good to my son, young woman.  I won’t have it, even if he will.  You hear me?

ANABEL.  Yes.  I won’t presume, then.

GERALD.  May she presume to be bad to me, mother?

MRS. BARLOW.  For that you may look after yourself.—­But a woman who was good to him would ruin him in six months, take the manhood out of him.  He has a tendency, a secret hankering, to make a gift of himself to somebody.  He sha’n’t do it.  I warn you.  I am not a woman to be despised.