one love

Sir Geoffry wanted (circumstances permitting, as he shortly put it) to marry Mary Layne; he wished to do it. Taking his mother into another room he told her this. Lady Chavasse simply thought him mad. She grew a little afraid of him, lest he should set her and all high rules of propriety at nought, and do it.

But trouble like this cannot be settled in an hour. Lady Chavasse, in her great fear, conciliated just a little: she did not turn Miss Layne out at once, as threatened, but suffered her to remain at the Grange for the night.

“In any case, whatever may be the ending of this, it is not from my family that risk of exposure must come,” spoke Sir Geoffry, in a tone of firmness. “It might leave me no alternative.”

“No alternative?” repeated Lady Chavasse. “How?”

“, and my duty to her,” said Sir Geoffry. And my lady’s heart fainted within her at the suggested fear.

They were together in the library at Chavasse Grange, Lady Chavasse and her only son Geoffry. It was early morning; they had sat in the breakfast-room making a show of partaking of the morning meal, each of them with that bitter trouble at the heart that had been known only — to my lady, at least — since the previous day. But the farce of speaking in monosyllables to one another could not be kept up — the trouble had to be dealt with, and without delay; and when the poor meal could not be prolonged by any artifice, Sir Geoffry held open the door for his mother to pass through, and crossed the hall with her to the library. Shut within its walls they could discuss the secret in safety; no eye to see them, no ear to hear.

Sir Geoffry mechanically stirred the fire, and placed a chair for his mother near it. The weather appeared to be changing. Instead of the unseasonable relaxing warmth that had been upon the earth up to the previous day, a cold north-east wind had set in, enough to freeze people’s marrow. The skies were grey and lowering; the trees shook and moaned: winter was taking up his place again.