I do! I'm sick of it. A
friend of mine has got a ranch forty miles from Buenos Ayres. He wants me
to go in with him--and I think I'll try it. I want something to distract my
mind from these troubles."
Lady Coryston's eyes blazed in her gray-white face, which not even her
strong will could keep from trembling.
"So this, Arthur, is the reward you propose for all that has been done for
you!--for the time, the thought, the money that has been showered upon
you--"
He looked at her from under his eyebrows, unmoved.
"I should have remembered all that, mother, if you--Look here! Have you
ever let me, in anything--for one day, one hour--call my soul my own--since
I went into Parliament? It's true I deceived you about Enid. I was
literally _afraid_ to tell you--there! You've brought me to that!
And when a man's afraid of a woman--it somehow makes a jelly of
him--altogether. It was partly what made me run after Enid--at first--that
I was doing something independent of you--something you would hate, if you
knew. Beastly of me, I know!--but there it was. And then you arranged that
meeting here, without so much as giving me a word's notice!--you told Page
_before you told me_.
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