Eustace had never been so deep in her affection as Bertie, still he was her first-born; and in face of news which meant that he was lost to her--for this must indeed be 'the marriage of two minds' (or whatever that quotation was)--she felt strangely jealous of a woman, who had won her son's love, when she herself had never won it.

The aching of this jealousy gave her face for a moment almost a spiritual expression, then passed away into impatience.

Why should he marry her?
Things could be arranged.

People spoke of it already as an illicit relationship; well then, let people have what they had invented.

If the worst came to the worst, this was not the only constituency in England; and a dissolution could not be far off.