alter looked at her perplexedly, not knowing what to say.
'Why will you not come?' he asked at length quite gently.
'I've disgraced ye enough,' she answered, a trifle sharply. 'Ye dinna ken what ye are daein', my man, askin' me to come an' bide wi' you. I've mair respect for ye than ye hae for yersel'. I'm much obleeged, a' the same, but I'm no' comin'.'
He perceived that the highest motive prompted her, and it convinced him as nothing else could have done that, if she had erred, she had also repented sincerely.
'What will you do, then?' he asked. 'Will you,' he added hesitatingly—'will you go to the old folk?'
She gave a short, hard laugh.
'No' me. There wad be plenty castin' up there, if ye like. No; I hae nae desire to see them again this side the grave.'
It was a harsh speech; but, knowing what the past had been, Walter could not blame her. As he stood looking through the little window, beyond the forest of roofs to where the sun lay warm and bright on far-off country slopes, he thought of the sore bitterness of life. He might well be at war with fate; it had not given him much of the good which makes life worth living. It was all very well for Gladys Graham, the spoiled child of a happy fortune, to reprove him for railing at the cruelty of circumstances; her suffering, even when the days were darkest with her, had been of a gentler and less hopeless kind.
'Liz,' he said, turning to his sister again, after what had seemed to her an interminable silence, 'if you won't come to me, promise me you'll stay here. I have not asked any questions about your way of doing, but I can guess at it. Promise me that you will give it all up and stay here.'
'Sponging off Teen, like?' she asked sarcastically.