The boy did not stir.
"I know what you have been thinking," Clifford went on. "I understand. It was only right for you to have turned from me if such a terrible thought had taken possession of you. If you had not done so, you would not have been worthy to be called a mother's son. I know well how the thought grew in your mind. It grew imperceptibly until it reached this terrible size, didn't it?"
The boy moved his head in silent assent.
"But now you must get rid of it," Clifford said quietly, "because it is not true. Your mother and I were not always happy together; things were not always easy for her, nor sometimes quite easy for me, and I made many mistakes, and I know I must have been very trying to her—often—often—one thinks of all those mistakes when it is too late. But, whatever I did do, or failed to do, I swear to you solemnly, that I never meant to be unkind to her."
Alan turned impulsively round, threw his arms round his father's neck, and whispered:
"Oh, father, I know you never were unkind to her."
[CHAPTER XII.]
Clifford was deeply wounded. It was all so much worse than he had expected. The injury to the boy, the injury to himself wrought by Mrs Stanhope, surpassed in reality his own vague anticipations of ill. But, as usual, he hid his feelings under his impenetrable manner, and to Knutty he only said:
"Knutty, Alan has been able to open his heart to me. And I have been able to tell him that—that I did not kill his mother."
"Oh, my dear one," she cried, "you have suffered, both of you."