“I cannot go away without Molly.”
The Duchess of Trent flushed. It seemed to her that this answer was an insult, even though she had in a manner forced it from him.
“I wonder that you dare say that to me,” she said, with a touch of anger.
“I beg your pardon, mother. But it’s no good our discussing such things. I can’t expect you to understand how I feel about her. She has given up everything—you may say she has reformed—for my sake, and if I were to send her adrift now I should feel myself a blackguard. Why, God help me, I believe the poor little thing’s been selling her jewels to pay the housekeeping bills for the last few months. If she’d been my wife she couldn’t have done more than that.”
His mother started, and a look of dreadful apprehension came into her eyes.
“Don’t talk like that, Alistair! I’m getting old, and it frightens me. Promise me, promise me, my own dear son, that you will never marry her?”
In her agitation the poor lady rose and went to him, laying a pleading hand on his shoulder as she looked into his face.
“No, I don’t suppose I shall ever do that,” he said.
But he spoke in a tone of dejection, like a man not certain of himself, and the mother’s fear was not relieved.