It was evident that he
was at once amused and troubled. This voice had cherished and chided him
all his life, and he could measure accurately what was behind it. It was
a wilful voice. It had the insistance which power gives, and to a woman
--or to most women--power is either money or beauty, since, in the world
as it is, office and authority are denied them. Beauty was gone from the
face of the ancient dame, but she still had much money, and, on rare
occasions, it gave her a little arrogance. It did so now as she
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.
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