Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/182

168 "There's this to say, my dear—that you take too much for granted!"

"That's just what Miss Armiger tells me. Give me, please, some more tea." His mother took his cup, but she look at him hard and searchingly. He bore it without meeting her eyes, only turning his own pensively to the different dainties on the table. "If I do take a great deal for granted," he went on, "you must remember that you brought me up to it."

Mrs. Beever found only after an instant a reply; then, however, she uttered it with an air of triumph. "I may have brought you up—but I didn't bring up Jean!"

"Well, it's not of her I'm speaking," the young man good-humouredly rejoined; "though I might remind you that she has been here again and again, and month after month, and has always been taught—so far as you could teach her—to regard me as her inevitable fate. Have you any real doubt," he went on, "of her recognising in a satisfactory way that the time has come?"

Mrs. Beever transferred her scrutiny to the interior of her teapot. "No!" she said after a moment.