Good Heavens! Gerald's son, Sir Massey Drummond's grandson, to be found on the side of the Philistines like that! What chill was in the boy's blood?
What crook in his character?
What bee in his bonnet?
The General had sworn then that Robin never should have his Nelly.

But the Dowager had been sapping and mining and laying plans to bring about the marriage almost from Nelly's infancy, when she had come in and altered the constituents of Nelly's baby bottles, and had infuriated Nelly's wholesome country nurse to the point of departure.

The General had come just in time then to find Mrs.Loveday fastening the cherry-coloured strings of her bonnet with fingers that trembled, and had been put to the very edge of his simple diplomacy to undo the Dowager's work.

He knew his own helplessness where women were concerned.
Nelly might see something in Robin, confound him, that the General could not.
At this point he would remember that, after all, Robin was poor Gerald's son, if an unworthy one, and be contrite.

But then the grievance would revive of a far-back Quaker ancestor of Lady Drummond, whom the General blamed for the peace-loving instincts of poor Gerald's boy; and once again he would be furious.
Meanwhile, Nelly's frank, innocent eyes, blue as gentians, had no consciousness of a lover.