But she would not let him go on until she had said all that she had to say. "If you don't care for me, Dick, if you have lost all the love you had for me when you were a child, then I know it is of no use saying these things. Words can't bring back love, nor reproaches. And after all, it wasn't about myself that I came here to speak to you. Your indifference has caused me pain, but I should not have taxed you with it now; I should have kept silence as I have done for many years, if it had not been that my love for you has been there ready for you if you had ever wanted it, and I thought you might want it now. But I can do nothing to help you if you won't let me a little way into your heart. I must just stand aside and see the breach between you and your father widen, when it might be healed, and you could restore him to happiness as well as take your happiness yourself."
Dick's face became harder as she mentioned his father, who had not been mentioned between them during the evening. "What can you do with him?" he asked, with a shade of scorn in his voice. "He is utterly unreasonable. He gets an idea into his head, and nothing will get it out."
Her voice was softer as she replied. "Dick dear, you know that isn't true."
He stirred uneasily in his chair. "It is true in this case," he said. "I suppose you mean that as a rule if you give him his head about anything you can pull him up and make him go the other way if you treat him carefully. I know you can, as a rule. This is an unfortunate exception to the rule."
"You have driven him into opposition by everything you have done," she said. "If you had been a little patient——"
"Oh, I was as patient as possible, at first," he interrupted her. "But he went beyond everything. The only thing was to go away until he had come to his senses. From what I have heard, through Walter, he is worse than ever. He is going to cut me off with a shilling. Well, let him. I can't imagine anything that will bother him more during the rest of his life than to have the prospect of Kencote divided up after his death. I can't imagine him thinking of such a thing. I'm not thinking of myself and what I'm going to get when I say it's a wicked thing to do. He's always looked upon the place as a sort of trust. It is a trust, and he is going to betray it for the sake of scoring off me. He must know that a threat of that sort would be the last thing to move me. It is spite, and spite that hurts him as much as it hurts me."
"Oh, Dick! Dick!" she said.
He gave another uneasy hitch to his body. Her gentle admonition showed him as no argument could have shown him from what source his speech had come.
"Of course I'm sore," he said, answering her implied reproach. "Any man would be sore in such a case. I believe you have seen Virginia. I ask you plainly, mother, if you are on his side—the sort of mud he throws at her—you know. Because if you are——"
"No, Dick dear," she said. "I have seen her, and I am not—not on his side, in that."