Carabas

A setting based on the early 1900s. I'm sitting at a dinner table, with my POV character's mother sitting somewhere to my right, and a woman who I'm having an intense argument with to my left, at the foot of the table. We argue frequently, I enjoy it; and I realize that although we're stating how much we hate each other, we're using words usually associated with passion or love.

Dinner's over, the woman is gone, but my mother and I are still in the same room, standing now. I'm talking about breaking my engagement to someone else. I've never met the girl I'm engaged to - she lives in (either New York or Boston, can't remember which - I thought of it as far away), and our fathers had arranged it between themselves, before my father died. My mother is warning me about possible consequences. She describes the girl's father as "the power behind the throne."