They expatiated on the way that the boy had come to be in his present serious condition. The proud old woman sat listening with a face as grey as flint and as hard. But she was suffering as she had not suffered before in all her imperious life. Bellamy wound up by saying: "I regret having to distress you, Lady Wychcote; but the boy's condition is much more serious than I would admit to his mother. In fact he is very dangerously ill.... But even if he recovers, you would scarcely like, I presume, to have your part in the matter brought up in Court."
Lady Wychcote swayed on her chair.
"'If he recovers'...." she repeated thickly. "Is there danger ... of ... his ... dying?"
"Grave danger," said Bellamy.
Lady Wychcote fainted for the first time in her life.
When Bellamy thought of how poor Bobby had come to have pneumonia, he did not wonder that his grandmother should faint on hearing that he might die. It had happened in this way:
To all the boy's frantic inquiries when he found that he was on the way to England without his mother, Lady Wychcote had always answered in some such words as these: "You must trust me, my dear. You will understand some day, but now you must submit to my judgment without questioning. It is best for you and for your mother that you should come with me. I cannot tell you anything more at present. Be a good boy. After a while you will be very happy I am sure."
She told him frankly, however, that they were going to England.
When he asked if his mother knew, if she would come, too, very soon, Lady Wychcote had replied: "She will know shortly. I do not know what her plans are."