"I am sorry not to be able to accept your invitation," I said, as we walked together to the door. "Perhaps you will give me another chance?"
His eyes twinkled cunningly. "What do you say to a quiet little dinner here?" he asked. "A slice of mutton, you know, and a bottle of good wine. Only our three selves, and one old friend of mine to make up four. We will have a rubber of whist in the evening. Mary and you partners--eh? When shall it be? Shall we say the day after to-morrow?"
She had followed us to the door, keeping behind Van Brandt while he was speaking to me. When he mentioned the "old friend" and the "rubber of whist," her face expressed the strongest emotions of shame and disgust. The next moment (when she had heard him fix the date of the dinner for "the day after to-morrow") her features became composed again, as if a sudden sense of relief had come to her. What did the change mean? "To-morrow" was the day she had appointed for seeing my mother. Did she really believe, when I had heard what passed at the interview, that I should never enter the house again, and never attempt to see her more? And was this the secret of her composure when she heard the date of the dinner appointed for "the day after to-morrow"?
Asking myself these questions, I accepted my invitation, and left the house with a heavy heart. That farewell kiss, that sudden composure when the day of the dinner was fixed, weighed on my spirits. I would have given twelve years of my life to have annihilated the next twelve hours.
In this frame of mind I reached home, and presented myself in my mother's sitting-room.
"You have gone out earlier than usual to-day," she said. "Did the fine weather tempt you, my dear?" She paused, and looked at me more closely. "George!" she exclaimed, "what has happened to you? Where have you been?"
I told her the truth as honestly as I have told it here.
The color deepened in my mother's face. She looked at me, and spoke to me with a severity which was rare indeed in my experience of her.
"Must I remind you, for the first time in your life, of what is due to your mother?" she asked. "Is it possible that you expect me to visit a woman, who, by her own confession--"
"I expect you to visit a woman who has only to say the word and to be your daughter-in-law," I interposed. "Surely I am not asking what is unworthy of you, if I ask that?"