“Get away to bed!” said he with dignity.
Cyril went, defiantly.
“He’s to have nothing but bread and water, mother,” Mr. Povey finished. He was, on the whole, pleased with himself.
Later in the day Constance reported, tearfully, that she had been up to Cyril and that Cyril had wept. Which was to Cyril’s credit. But all felt that life could never be the same again. During the remainder of existence this unspeakable horror would lift its obscene form between them. Constance had never been so unhappy. Occasionally, when by herself, she would rebel for a brief moment, as one rebels in secret against a mummery which one is obliged to treat seriously. “After all,” she would whisper, “suppose he HAS taken a few shillings out of the till! What then? What does it matter?” But these moods of moral insurrection against society and Mr. Povey were very transitory. They were come and gone in a flash.
CHAPTER V — ANOTHER CRIME
I
One night—it was late in the afternoon of the same year, about six months after the tragedy of the florin—Samuel Povey was wakened up by a hand on his shoulder and a voice that whispered: “Father!”
The thief and the liar was standing in his night-shirt by the bed. Samuel’s sleepy eyes could just descry him in the thick gloom.