One morning Nan passed a letter down the table without comment. Barrington’s brows drew together in a frown; halfway through reading it he flung it from him.
“Another! Well, I must say they might have waited until they knew whether they could afford——”
Nan interrupted him quietly. “Billy, not before——”
She glanced at the children.
When they were supposed to have forgotten what their father had said, Kay and Peter were informed—Aunt Je-hane had another little girl.
That evening the king and queen of the castle talked together after the knight and the princess had been put to bed.
“They’ve no right to do a thing like that—bringing another child into the world. Jehane doesn’t love him. It’s my belief she never has. The thing’s sordid. What chance will the little beggar have? It puts the whole business of marriage on a level with the animals. Ugh!”
They were sitting beneath the mulberry in the cool dusk. From far away, like waves lapping against the walls of a precipice in a cranny of which they had found shelter, the weary complaint of London reached them. Within his own house, with his wife and children, Barrington felt lifted high above all that. He hated this intrusion of strife and ugliness.
Nan’s arm stole round his neck; she had never lost the shyness with which she had given him her first caress. “Billy, old boy, you mustn’t be angry with them—only sorry. Don’t you know we’re exceptional.”
“Not so exceptional as all——”