Mrs Tower sprang to the fray as soon as she heard the front door close behind us.
'Are you crazy, Jane?' she cried.
'Not more than most people who don't habitually live in a lunatic asylum, I trust,' Jane answered blandly.
'May I ask why you're going to marry this young man?' asked Mrs Tower with formidable politeness.
'Partly because he won't take no for an answer.
He's asked me five times.
I grew positively tired of refusing him.'
'And why do you think he's so anxious to marry you?'
'I amuse him.'
Mrs Tower gave an exclamation of annoyance. 'He's an unscrupulous rascal.
I very nearly told him so to his face.'
'You would have been wrong, and it wouldn't have been very polite.'
'He's penniless and you're rich.
You can't be such a besotted fool as not to see that he's marrying you for your money.'
Jane remained perfectly composed.
She observed her sister-in-law's agitation with detachment.
'I don't think he is, you know,' she replied.
'I think he's very fond of me.'
'You're an old woman, Jane.'
'I'm the same age as you are, Marion,' she smiled.
'I've never let myself go.
I'm very young for my age.
No one would think I was more than forty.
But even I wouldn't dream of marrying a boy twenty years younger than myself.'
'Twenty-seven,' corrected Jane.
'Do you mean to tell me that you can bring yourself to believe that it's possible for a young man to care for a woman old enough to be his mother?'
'I've lived very much in the country for many years.
I daresay there's a great deal about human nature that I don't know.
They tell me there's a man called Freud, an Austrian, I believe ...'
But Mrs Tower interrupted her without any politeness at all. 'Don't be ridiculous, Jane.
It's so undignified.
It's so ungraceful.
I always thought you were a sensible woman.
Really you're the last person I should ever have thought likely to fall in love with a boy.'
'But I'm not in love with him.
I've told him that.
Of course I like him very much or I wouldn't think of marrying him.
I thought it only fair to tell him quite plainly what my feelings were towards him.'
Mrs Tower gasped.
The blood rushed to her head and her breathing oppressed her.
She had no fan, but she seized the evening paper and vigorously fanned herself with it.
'If you're not in love with him why do you want to marry him?'
'I've been a widow a very long time and I've led a very quiet life.
I thought I'd like a change.'
'If you want to marry just to be married why don't you marry a man of your own age?'
'No man of my own age has asked me five times.
In fact no man of my own age has asked me at all.'
Jane chuckled as she answered.
It drove Mrs Tower to the final pitch of frenzy.
'Don't laugh, Jane.