"That is true. It is a mother who should tell a girl her duty. Poor Lesley's mother has not done all that she might do in that respect. Our unhappy quarrel has caused her to represent me to the girl in very dark colors, I believe. But I have lately been wondering whether that might not be amended. Did you hear that man's taunt this afternoon—about the wife that had left me? I can't endure that sort of thing. Think of the harm it does. And then the child must needs go and sing 'Home, Sweet Home.' To me, whose home was broken up by her mother. I had the greatest possible difficulty in sitting through that song, Rosalind. And I said to myself that I was a great fool to put up with this state of things."
His sentences were unusually short, his tones abrupt; both covered an amount of agitation which Mrs. Romaine had not expected to see. She sat down and remained silent and motionless: she even held her breath, not well knowing what to expect. Presently he resumed, in a lower tone—
"I know that if I alter existing arrangements I shall give myself some pain and discomfort, and inflict more, perhaps, upon others; but I think this is inevitable. I am determined, if possible, to end my solitary life, and the solitary life also of a woman who is—I may say it now—dear to me." He spoke with deliberate gravity. Mrs. Romaine's pulses beat faster: the hot color began to steal into her cheeks. "I never wished to inflict pain upon her. I have always regretted the years of separation and loneliness that we have both spent. So I have resolved—perhaps that is too strong a word—I am thinking of asking her to share my home with me again."
"Again?" The word escaped Rosalind's lips before she knew that she had spoken.
"Yes, once again," said Caspar, quite unconscious of her emotion. "We did not get on very well when we lived together, but we are older now, and I think that if we made a fresh start it might be possible—I wonder if Alice would consent?"
There was a moment's pause. Then—"You think of asking Lady Alice to come back to you?" said Mrs. Romaine, in a hard, measured voice, which made Caspar look at her with some transient feeling of surprise. But he put down the change of tone to her astonishment at his proposition, and went on unmoved.
"I thought of it—yes. It would be much better for Lesley."
"Are you so devoted to Lesley that you want to sacrifice your whole life for her?" asked Rosalind, in the same hard, strained voice.
"My whole life? Well, no—but you exaggerate, Rosalind. I do not sacrifice my whole life by having my wife and daughter in my house."
"That is plausibly said. But one has to consider what sort of wife and daughter yours are, and what part of your life will have to be devoted to them."