"This is a daughter? He never said anything about a daughter."
"Well, I suppose you didn't happen to get on that—and you didn't ask. A woman would have asked, of course, whether there were any children—and how old they were, and what was the color of their hair."
"Upon my soul, it never occurred to me!"
"It wouldn't," she remarked, smiling. "But this is Margaret."
"Where's she been all the while?"
"Oh, only at school—there's no mystery. He was only at Hatcham Ford four years—just her school years. He didn't bring her there in the holidays, because that would have meant a chaperon—he couldn't have looked after a girl—and he hated the idea of that. And I think he was afraid, too, that the people wouldn't be nice to her. He was very sensitive for her, though he wasn't at all for himself." She paused a moment. "Does that explain anything else I've said?"
I thought, for a moment, over our talk. "About the marriage?"
"Yes," said Jenny. "It didn't seem fair to her without that. That weighed with him more than anything else—and with me, too, a good deal. I don't think I need be ashamed of that."
"Certainly you needn't—quite the contrary in fact."
"We should have wanted her to be with us—to pay us visits anyhow—at least until she married. Yes, it wouldn't have been just." She frowned impatiently; still more than anything else, Margaret Octon seemed to bring home to her the difficult side—the side most hard to defend—of what she had done and contemplated. She passed away from it without more words.