“But, mother, you might not have _told_ them, they might have guessed, and it’s not the not knowing that I mind, it’s--it’s--Mr. Methven!”
“Dear Duke, did it never strike you as possible that I might marry again?”
“Never! Never! You belong to Wiggins and me--and father. Have you forgotten father?”
“Oh, mother, say it isn’t true, say it isn’t true, or I shall die!”
Mary folded the boy closer in her arms. “It is not true, dear. Mr. Methven has not even asked me to marry him.”
As she spoke she remembered her own words as she looked into the glass the night before. Her face grew very sad.
“But if he did ask you, mother, you would say no? You would say no?”
The Duke’s voice, husky with long crying, was very pathetic.
Mary leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. She held her boy very close, and her breath came quickly.
“I don’t think he will ask me, dear, but if he does, I must say no, for his sake!”
The Duke sat up and gazed at his mother in absolute amazement.
“For his sake,” he repeated in a hushed, almost frightened voice. “Do you want to marry him, mother?”
“It does not matter much what I want to do, my little son; it’s what I must _not_ do that we have to do with. I shall not marry Mr. Methven. Some day when you are a man you will realize what I have given up for you--and for him!” And Mary fell a-weeping with her boy clasped in her arms.
The Duke felt her hot tears on his short-cropped hair, and he trembled; then, releasing himself from his mother’s arms, got off her knee and stood beside her, very pale and grave.
“Dear!” he said solemnly, “if you want to marry this--gentleman--if it will make you happier, you shall. Do you hear, darling? You shall.” And throwing himself into his mother’s arms, they cried together. When it came to the point, he found that he loved his mother better--than himself.
Presently Mary began to laugh. “Oh, Duke, Duke, how funny you are! You talk as if I were a little girl, as if--but it doesn’t matter--some day you will understand.... It’s not going to happen, Duke dear. It’s been a storm in a teacup. You must never listen to what ignorant people say.”
“May I contradict them, politely?” asked the Duke eagerly, with an immense relief shining in his eyes.