"I suppose I can," said Wilbraham. "But all the same you're not treating her in the way you boast of if you're not prepared to look upon Harry in the same light. You'll agree that on the outside of things they're not equal—those two."
"I don't agree to that," said Bastian, dogmatically.
"I said on the outside of things," Wilbraham persisted. "You've been where he belongs, and you know what sort of position he's in. You may have belonged to the same sort of thing once. I don't know. You've never told me who your people were. But you say yourself that you've come down in the world, and it's pretty obvious that you're not in anything like the position the Brents are now. So you can see how it would have been likely to strike me when I first found it out. But Harry is what he is. I trusted him, just as you trusted Viola. And afterwards I saw Viola. If I can think of her as I do, you ought to be able to think of Harry in the same way, though you haven't seen him."
"Very well, then," said Bastian. "Let's take it that, leaving out things that don't matter, they're to be looked at in the same way. Of course I know, really, that he's something quite out of the common. I've heard the people there talk about him. If I hadn't thought there was no harm in it—for Viola—I shouldn't have treated it as I have. But you see, Wilbraham, as a father I've got to look a little farther ahead than you do. I suppose to you it's just a boy and girl falling in love with one another in all their innocence, and if nothing comes of it no harm will be done. Well, it wouldn't to him. But it's rather different with her, isn't it?"
Wilbraham was silent. That was exactly as he had looked at it, on Harry's behalf. And it would be different for Viola.
"If he's what you say he is," said Bastian, pursuing his advantage, "he won't want to throw her off when he gets older. But his people will want him to, and when they know they'll try to bring it about. Harry and Viola! Yes. But it's me and Lady Brent, you see, as well—as she seems to be the one that counts most. I don't know anything about the boy's mother; they don't talk about her much down there. It's his grandmother who seems to count for everything. Who was his mother, by the by?"
Wilbraham had forgotten until that moment the photograph on the mantelpiece. He awoke to its realization with a mental start. If Bastian had not shown himself ignorant of Mrs. Brent's origin he might have succumbed to the instinct for the dramatic and surprised him by pointing her out in reply to his question. But when the question came he had just received the impression of loyalty on the part of Mrs. Ivimey, or anybody else to whom Bastian may have talked about "the family." They had not given Mrs. Brent away. He wouldn't either, at least at this stage.
"Nobody in particular," he said with a half truth. "They were only married for a few weeks. Lady Brent is Harry's guardian, and of course she's had most to do with bringing him up more or less in seclusion at Royd. I suppose you know that he has gone off to enlist."
"Yes, and I suppose you've come here to find out from Viola where he is, and haul him back again."
Wilbraham told him why he had come up. "I shall go and see Gulliver to-morrow," he said, "and get him to make inquiries. Then I hope in a few days Harry will write. She'll be satisfied with that, and whether Gulliver finds him or not she won't make any attempt to get him back."