nd you'll have to do,
that carries the day; and a good thing, too, considering."

"Good morning, again. You are not quite yourself, I think."

"Well, I didn't sleep last night, so there's no wonder if I'm a bit
cross this morning. But if I lose my temper, I keep my understanding."

She was really cross by this time. Her son had put her in a position she
did not like to assume. No love for Rawdon Court was in her heart. She
would rather have advanced the money to buy an American estate. She
had been little pleased at Fred's mortgage on the old place, but to
the American Rawdons she felt it would prove a white elephant; and
the appeal to Ethel was advised because she thought it would amount to
nothing. In the first place, the Judge had the strictest idea of the
sacredness of the charge committed to him as guardian of his daughter's
fortune. In the second, Ethel inherited from her Yorkshire ancestry an
intense sense of the value and obligations of money. She was an ardent
American, and not likely to spend it on an old English manor; and,
furthermore, Madam's penetration had discovered a growing dislike in her
granddaughter for Fred Mostyn.

"She'd never abide him for a lifelong neighbor," the old lady decided.
"It is the Rawdon pride in her. The Rawdon men have condescended to go
to Mostyn for wives many and many a time, but never once have the Mostyn
men married a Rawdon girl--proud, set-up women, as far as I remember;
and Ethel has a way with her just like them. Fred is good enough and
nice enough for any girl, and I wonder what is the matter with him!
It is a week and more since he was here, and then he wasn't a bit like
himself."

At this moment the bell rang and she heard Fred's voice inquiring "if
Madam was at home." Instantly she divined the motive of his call. The
young man had come to the conclusion the Judge would try to influence
his mother, and before meeting him in the afternoon he wished to have
some idea of the trend matters were likely to take. His policy--cunning,
Madam called it--did not please her. She immediately assured herself
that "she wouldn't go against her own flesh and blood for anyone," and
his wan face and general air of wretchedness further antagonized her.
She asked him fretfully "what he had been doing to himself, for," she
added, "it's mainly what we do to ourselves that makes us sick. Was it
that everlasting wedding of the Denning girl?"

He flushed angrily, but answered with much of