“It’s a lie! Where is the girl?”
“She is in the workhouse, I believe. I don’t know who spread it, or how many have heard. But Honoria believes it.”
“Honoria! She cannot—” He came to a sudden halt. “But, mother, even supposing Honoria believes it, I don’t see—”
He was looking straight at her. Her eyes sank. Light began to break in on him.
“Mother!”
Humility did not look up.
“Mother! Don’t tell me that she—that Honoria—”
“She made us promise—your father and me.... God knows it did no more than repay what your father had suffered.... Your future was everything to us....”
“And I have been maintained at Oxford by her money,” he said, pausing in his bitterness on every word.
“Not by that only, Taffy! There was your scholarship... and it was true about my savings on the lace-work....”