"You have never been a mother, yet I think your
sympathetic nature causes you to understand much which you have not
experienced, and knowing as you do the great pride I feel in my son's
career, and the ambition I have for him to rise to the very highest
pinnacle of success and usefulness, I am sure you will comprehend my
anxiety when I see him exhibiting an undue interest in a girl who is
in every way his inferior, and wholly unsuited to fill the position
his wife should occupy."
The Baroness listened with a cold, sinking sensation at her heart
"I am sure your son would never make a choice which was not agreeable
to you," she ventured.
"He might not marry anyone I objected to," Mrs Stuart replied, "but I
dread to think his heart may be already gone from his keeping. Young
men are so susceptible to a pretty face and figure, and I confess
that Joy Irving has both. She is a good girl, too, and a fine
musician; but she has no family, and her alliance with my son would
be a great drawback to his career. Her father was a grocer, I
believe, or something of that sort; quite a common man, who married a
third-class actress, Joy's mother. Mr Irving was in very comfortable
circumstances at one time, but a stroke of paralysis rendered him
helpless some four years ago. He died last year and left his widow
and child in straitened circumstances.
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