It was hard in tone, and limited in range--it opened her mouth, but it failed to kindle any light in her eyes.
"Jealous of the ugly doctor!" she exclaimed.

"Oh, Ovid, what next ?" "You never made a greater mistake in your life," her son answered sharply.
"Then what is the objection to him ?" Mrs.Gallilee rejoined.
It was not easy to meet that question with a plain reply.

If Ovid asserted that Benjulia's chemical experiments were assumed--for some reason known only to himself--as a cloak to cover the atrocities of the Savage Science, he would only raise the doctor in his mother's estimation.

If, on the other hand, he described what had passed between them when they met in the Zoological Gardens, Mrs.Gallilee might summon Benjulia to explain the slur which he had indirectly cast on the memory of Carmina's mother--and might find, in the reply, some plausible reason for objecting to her son's marriage.

Having rashly placed himself in this dilemma, Ovid unwisely escaped from it by the easiest way.