admonished her beloved son, who at any time would have renounced fortune,
or hope of fortune, for some wilful idea of his own. A less sordid
modern did not exist.

He was not very effective in the contest of tongue between his mother and
himself. As the talk went on he foresaw that he was to be beaten; yet he
persisted, for he loved a joy-wrangle, as he called it, with his mother.
He had argued with her many a time, just to see her in a harmless
passion, and note how the youth of her came back, giving high colour to
the wrinkled face, and how the eyes shone with a brightness which had
been constant in them long ago. They were now quarrelling over that
ever-fruitful cause of antagonism--the second woman in the life of a man.
Yet, strange to say, the flamingo-like Eugenie Guise, was fighting for
the second woman, not against her.

"I'll say it all again and again and again till you have sense, Orlando,"
she declared. "Your old mother hasn't lived all these years for nothing.
I'm not thinking of you; I'm thinking of her." She pointed towards the
door of another room, from which came sounds of laughter--happy laughter
--in which a man's and a woman's voices sounded. "On the day she comes
into this house--and that's the day after to-morrow--I shall go. I'll
stand at the door and welcome you, and see you have a good wedding-
breakfast and that it all goes off grand, then I shall vanish."

Orlando made a helpless gesture of the hand. "Well, mother, as I said,
it will make us both unhappy--Louise as much as me. You and I have never
been parted except for a few weeks at a time, and I'm sure I don't know
how I could stand it."

"Rather late to think about it," the other returned. "You can't have two