"It was beautiful of you to warn me," he said quite simply. "I know it could not have been easy. But it was the act of a true friend."
Then he went away. And Katharine, alone with her thoughts, threw herself into the arm-chair and closed her eyes.
[CHAPTER XII.]
Clifford Thornton passed on from that moment to a new chapter in his heart's history. He was too stern with himself to yield without a struggle to even any secret locked-up happiness; and so he tried to turn from the thought of Katharine Frensham as from something altogether out of his horizon. But, against his wishes, bright hopes sprang up within him. Unbidden and harshly rebuked possibilities of joy pressed themselves importunately on him. A fair vision of a fresh life rose before him. He dispelled it angrily, and returned to his former self, with the old tyranny of Marianne chafing him, and the added anxiety concerning his young son's love and loyalty. Nevertheless, he had passed on. He was of course too proud to ask Katharine what accusation Mrs Stanhope had brought against him, and too reserved to thank her the next morning for her words of warning. He did not even tell her that he had made up his mind to take an earlier boat to New York, and thus remove Alan from Mrs Stanhope's influence. His secret belief that he was responsible for Marianne's death made him morbidly anxious to keep Alan away from any one who might come between them. And Katharine Frensham's allusion to Mrs Stanhope's attitude towards him made him doubly apprehensive of her powers of making mischief. He knew that she had unceasingly stirred up strife between himself and Marianne, and he considered her capable of at least making the attempt to cause a breach between himself and his son. He knew that she disliked him, and that she believed he had always been hard and unkind to poor Marianne. Many a time Marianne herself had said to him:
"Julia at least appreciates and understands me; she at least knows of my unhappiness and your unkind indifference."
What would she say to Alan if by chance he passed her way? Alan, too, had always disliked her; he, too, had felt that she was an enemy to his father and himself; nevertheless she would certainly be able to influence him, for the very reason that his mother had died in circumstances of great sadness, and generous young hearts remember only the best things of the dead. Marianne would conquer as she had always conquered, and the boy's heart would turn from his father.
Clifford was greatly troubled.
"I must have my boy's love, I must have his loyalty," he said. "I cannot do without it. I desire with all my heart that he should think lovingly of his mother; but he must not, shall not turn from me. I have done nothing to deserve that he should not love me. He shall not see that woman if I can help it. She shall not have the chance of saying one word against me. His dear young heart shall keep its love and trust. The sadness of this tragedy in our lives will pass from him; it is passing from him even now. And the wound which I, in my selfishness, inflicted, shall be healed with a love which father never gave to son before. He must and shall believe in me. If I have missed other things, at least I will wrest this from life. She may say what she likes to the whole world, but not to him; he would not understand. If he were older, I would take my chance of his belief or disbelief. But the young judge and are hard."
Then in the midst of his distress he remembered Katharine, and again that vision rose before him. He tried to turn from it, but in vain.
"She believed in me," he said. "Whatever that woman may have said to her, she believed in me."