But Honoria still advanced. “You shall speak!”
Joey, catching sight of her from the bed, screamed and hid his face. To him she was a thing of horror. From the night when, thrust beneath her eyes, he had cowered by her carriage-step, she had haunted his worst dreams. And now, black-robed and terrible of face, she had come to lay hands on him and carry him straight to hell.
“Mother! Take her away! take her away!”
His screams rang through the room. “Hush, dear!” cried Lizzie, running to him; and laid a hand on his shoulder.
But the child, far too terrified to know whose hand it was, flung himself from her with a wilder scream than any; flung himself all but free of the bed-clothes. As Lizzie caught and tried to hold him the thin night-shirt ripped in her fingers, laying bare the small back from shoulder to buttock.
They were woman to woman now; cast back into savagery and blindly groping for its primitive weapons. Honoria crossed the floor not knowing what she meant to do, or might do. Lizzie sprang to defence against she knew not what. But when her enemy advanced, towering, with a healthy boy dragging at her skirts, she did the one thing she could—turned with a swift cry back upon her own crippled child and caught at the bed-clothes to cover and hide his naked deformity.
While she crouched and shielded him, silence fell on the room. She had half expected Honoria to strike her; but no blow came, nor any sound. By-and-by she looked up. Honoria had come to a standstill, with rigid eyes. They were fastened on the bed. Then Lizzie understood.
She had covered the child’s legs from sight; but not his back—nor the brown mole on it—the large brown mole, ringed like Saturn, set obliquely between the shoulder-blades.
She rose from the bed slowly. Honoria turned on little George with a gesture as if to fling off his velvet jacket. But Lizzie stamped her foot.
“No,” she commanded hoarsely; “let be. Mine is a cripple.”