"I have done nothing. I have only not done that
which nobody had a right to ask me to do."
"Right indeed! And who are you with your rights? A decent
well-behaved young man with five or six hundred a year has no right
to ask you to be his wife! All this comes of you staying with an
old woman with a handle to her name."
It was in vain that Mary endeavoured to explain that she had not
alluded to Larry when she declared that no one had a right to ask
her to do it. She had, she said, always thanked him for his good
opinion of her, and had spoken well of him whenever his name was
mentioned. But it was a matter on which a young woman was entitled
to judge for herself, and no one had a right to scold her because
she could not love him. Mrs. Masters hated such arguments, despised
this rodomontade about love, and would have crushed the girl into
obedience could it have been possible. "You are an idiot," she
said, "an ungrateful idiot; and unless you think better of it
you'll repent your folly to your dying day. Who do you think is to
come running after a moping slut like you?" Then Mary gathered
herself up and left the room, feeling that she could not live in
the house if she were to be called a slut.
Soon after this Larry came to the attorney and got him to come out
into the street and to walk with him round the churchyard.
Pages:
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436