"Then you will be as bad as he!" cried the incensed woman. "You will be compounding a felony," she went on wildly. "You will be breaking the law of the land."
"Nay, nay, mother. Come," he answered, "look at the matter reasonably. My prosecuting Mr. Anderson will not restore the money to me."
"But it will cause him to be punished," she exclaimed. "That is what we want--we want him to be made to suffer."
"You’re so foolish, Bernard, so very foolish!" screamed Mrs. Cameron, scarcely knowing what she said. "It’s that daughter of his you are thinking about. I know it is. You are perfectly infatuated with her."
"Will you please keep her out of this discussion?" asked Bernard.
But his mother was unreasonable, and would drag Doris in, time after time, telling him that she was a chip of the same block as John Anderson, saying, "Like father, like daughter," and declaring that she would never consent to his marrying Doris if there were not another woman in the kingdom.
Bernard was as patient as he could possibly be, but at length, finding it impossible to endure any more such talk, he caught up his hat and went out, with his mother’s parting words ringing in his ears.
"Unless you prosecute that rogue, John Anderson, and give me your promise that you will never marry his daughter, my house shall be your home no longer: you shall not sleep another night under my roof!"
Hard words! stinging words! They seemed to ring in Bernard’s ears again, as, sitting there on a seat in the central walk of the Temperate House in Kew Gardens under the shade of a fine Norfolk Island pine, he thought about them sadly. No wonder was it that when they were uttered they drove him immediately--and he thought for ever--from his mother’s house. Since then he had come to London and obtained an ill-paid assistant mastership in a suburban school, and now he spent all his time searching for Doris, yet in vain. "I have lost her," he said to himself, "I have lost her in this huge metropolis. Yet I forbore to prosecute her father for her sake: and for her sake I am an outcast from home, a mere usher in a school, earning my daily bread in the outskirts of this city!"
A great longing to see the girl he loved once more filled his whole heart; he longed to see her inexpressibly.