"Your father?" Sir Basil repeated soothingly, since this departed personality seemed a menace that might easily be dealt with, "What is it? What have they done? How can I help you? My dear child, do treat me as a friend. Do tell me what is the matter."
"It's mama! mama!—she has broken my heart—as she broke his," sobbed Imogen, finding her former words. Already, such was the amazing irony of events, Sir Basil seemed, more than anyone in the world, to take that dead father's place, to help her in her grief over him. The puzzle of it inflicted a deeper pang. "I can't tell you," she sobbed. "But I can never, never forgive her!"
"Forgive your mother?" Sir Basil repeated, shocked. "Don't, I beg of you, speak so. It's some misunderstanding."
"No!—No!—It is understanding—it is the whole understanding! It has come out at last—the truth—the dreadful truth."
"But can't you tell me? can't you explain?"
She lifted her face and drew away from him as she said, pressing her handkerchief to her eyes: "You never knew him. You cannot care for him—no one who cares, as much as you do, for her,—can ever care for him."
Sir Basil had deeply flushed. He led her to the sunny rock and made her sit down on a low ledge, where she leaned forward, her face in her hands, long sighs of exhaustion succeeding her tears. "I know nothing about your father, as you say, and I do care, very much, for your mother," said Sir Basil after a little while. "But I care for you, very much, too."
"Ah, but you could never care for me so much as to think her wrong."
"I don't know about that. Why not?—if she is wrong. One often thinks people one is fond of very wrong. Do you know," and Sir Basil now sat down beside her, a little lower, on the moss, "do you know you'll make me quite wretched if you won't have confidence in me. I really can't stand seeing you suffer and not know what it's about. I don't—I can't feel myself such a stranger as that. Won't you think of me," he took one of her hands and held it as he said this, "won't you think of me as, well, as a sort of affectionate old brother, you know? I want to be trusted, and to see if I can't help you. Don't be afraid," he added, "of being disloyal—of making me care less, you know, for your mother, by anything you say; for you wouldn't."
Leaning there, her face hidden, while she half heard him, it struck her suddenly, a shaft of light in darkness, that, indeed, he might help her. She dropped her hand to look at him and, with all its tear-stained disfigurement, he thought that he had never seen anything more heavenly than that look. It sought, it sounded him, pleaded with and caressed him. And, with all its solemnity, there dawned in it a tenderness deeper than any that he had ever seen in her.