Page:Heavens!.djvu/130

 right arm over it as if to protect it, and said firmly and decidedly—

“If you do not give me that certainty here, this very day, then you have held my child for the last time in your arms, you have kissed me for the last time, you have crossed my threshold for the last time to-day. Then I shall consider you a man who”

“Jenny!”

“Truth has sharp edges, Mundy, but it cannot cut an honest, honourable man. I ask you to answer my questions plainly and decisively. When will you have our union hallowed before the world by the Church?”

“As long as my mother lives it is impossible.”

“Your mother won’t die till she has united you to a woman of her own rank, who will be to her own liking, and whose character will give her a guarantee that after her death she will rule you as much as she herself has ruled you all your life. What will become of me and of my child in the mean time? Answer me that, if you are a man.”

“I am my own master. Nobody shall ever be my wife but yourself.”

“You are not your own master, because, when you ought to show that you are, you cower down behind your mother, and make your own fate and mine, and the future of our child, dependent on her will. And because you are not your own master, because you are not energetic character, capable of resisting the persuasions, reproaches, threats, and even, perhaps, intrigues of such an energetic, imperious autocrat as your mother is. I cannot be satisfied with your mere promise that you will take no one for your wife but me. I know the circumstances of your family as well as you do yourself. I