“Tall talk, my dear,” he began; and then broke off, dropped his eyes under Sir Everard’s stern gaze, and stood abashed. Then: “Perhaps you’re right,” he said in an altered, strangled voice; and dashed from the room as if driven.
Pamela started, glanced after him, and then wiped her wet cheeks with the end of the baby’s shawl.
“Let him go,” she said.
“You’re a brave girl.”
“Oh no, sir! Only so grateful, so wonderfully saved, so ashamed. Oh, this little creature against my breast—must I not feel it—think of it—if I had had my foolish way I should never have been worthy to hold such a lovely, lovely little dear in my arms again.”
Sir Everard insisted on lighting Pamela to her attic chamber. She went up before him with a step so elastic, in spite of the burden of the child in her arms, that she had to wait for him on every landing; which she did with a return of her bright amiability and even a flicker of its former radiance in her smile. Each time she halted she rocked the baby, swaying from foot to foot, murmuring under her breath a crooning song which the old man thought very sweet; so sweet indeed, that, with a swing of memory’s pendulum it brought him back to his own childhood’s days and the tender face of his mother, long dead—a mother who had never been old like him.
On the threshold of her poor room they parted. She spared him her right hand for a second from its motherly caressing and patting of the child which she bore with such ease on her left arm. He bowed over it as if it had been his queen’s.
When he went down to the flaming hearth which justified the landlord’s boast, he sat long by it.
He, who had hitherto lived apart in a world of books, found his mind obsessed by the thought of the frightful passions of humanity as they had this night played themselves out before him.