"
"No--no"--she said, laughing--"I am not such a fool. There will be many
natural opportunities of meeting."
"There are some difficulties with the Vavasours. They have been
disagreeable about the gardens. Ferrier and I have promised to go over
and advise her."
"Good!" said Lady Lucy, delighted that the Vavasours had been
disagreeable. "Good-night, my son, good-night!"
A minute later Oliver stood meditating in his own room, where he had
just donned his smoking-jacket. By one of the natural ironies of life,
at a moment when he was more in love than he had ever been yet, he was,
nevertheless, thinking eagerly of prospects and of money. Owing to his
peculiar relation to his mother, and his father's estate, marriage would
be to him no mere satisfaction of a personal passion. It would be a
vital incident in a politician's career, to whom larger means and
greater independence were now urgently necessary. To marry with his
mother's full approval would at last bring about that provision for
himself which his father's will had most unjustly postponed. He was
monstrously dependent upon her. It had been one of the chief checks on a
strong and concentrated ambition.
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