"I think she is the nicest girl I ever met," said his mother, when the smoke had time to clear away. "Poor girl! How could she have made such a fool of herself?"
"What do you mean? Who made a fool of herself?"
"You recalled the story--it was in all the papers. But I called her Miss Wadhurst."
"There's a difference between a girl making a fool of herself and being made a victim of, isn't there?"
"But the notoriety--it is not her fault, I know, but still----"
"I don't know what. I don't know anything. I only feel." He looked at her for some time--at first with a frown creeping over his face, but it did not develop into a frown; on the contrary, it vanished in a smile. He took her hand and put his arm about her.
"Thank God that you can feel, mother, for it's more than most women can do nowadays," said he. "And what you should feel is that if that girl was a fool once she may be a fool again and marry me; and that if I have been a fool always I may be wise once and marry her, if I can. I tell you that she--she--by God! she has made a man of me, and that's a big enough achievement for any girl. Thank God, my dear mother, that I've set my heart on a girl that can do this off her own bat."
"I will, my son," said she, quietly; and they walked back to the house without a word.
She never once looked back in any sense, when she had passed out of the gates of the Manor. She had known that it was laid upon her to go through this ordeal of standing before the mother whom he loved, to be approved by her. She had faced the ordeal without shrinking, because she loved him. She was as sure of him and his love for her as she had been certain of the deceit of the wretch with whom she had gone through the empty ceremony of marriage in order that her mother might die happy--though the result was that she died of her misery.
She knew that if Mrs. Wingfield were pleased with her, Jack would be delighted and ask her to marry him the next time they met, if he did not force a meeting with her for the purpose; but if his mother did not approve of her, and called her heartless because her dress was white instead of black, and flippant because she had appeared several days at a sporting meeting within a couple of months of her husband's death, he would be greatly downcast, but he would ask her to marry him all the same.