"What difference?"
"Well, the difference between them and Lady Brent."
"Lady Brent! How can you talk like that? It's just that I'm so mad with Lady Brent that I——"
"I know it is. All you can think of is to score off her. You're not thinking of Harry; you're not even thinking of yourself. What are you going to get, out of going back on everything you've stood for for the last twenty years? Harry thinks of you as belonging to Royd, in the same sort of way as Lady Brent does. Why should he have ever thought of you as anything different? Now you're proposing to show him the difference. You say yourself they are different. You're going to show him the difference between Lady Brent and them. Which is likely to come out of it best? I don't know; I'm asking you."
"Oh, you're just trying to aggravate me," she said. "You always were like that. I don't know why I talk to you at all."
"Well, if you've finished, I think I'll go in. I want a peaceful time as long as I'm here. You're the only person who doesn't seem to be comfortable and happy. I'd rather be with those of them who are."
"I'm not at all happy. I'm just miserable. Harry doesn't love me any more, and I don't know what to do about it."
They had come to the bowling alley where Wilbraham had thought out his difficulties two summers before. She sank down on to the seat and cried.
Wilbraham felt very sorry for her, but determined to prevent her from making mischief if he could. "Look here," he said, "I don't think it really much matters whether you introduce Harry to your people or not. He's grown up now, and all that idea of keeping things from him is over. Do what you like about it. Lady Brent won't try to stop you; I'm pretty certain of that. She has given up trying to direct his life. Why can't you?"
Her sobs increased. "I'm his mother," she said. "I've had so little of him. I can't give him up now."