At the word "inferior," a slight shock passed over Eva from head to foot. She went swiftly to her lover, knelt down and pressed her lips to his brown hand, hiding her face upon it.
He raised her tenderly in his arms, and thus embraced, they stood there together, confronting the mother—confronting the world.
Fanny put out her hands with a bitter cry. "Eva!"
The girl ran to her, clung to her. "Oh, mamma, I love you dearly. But you must not try to separate me from David. I could not leave him—I never will."
"Let us go in, to our own room," said the mother, in a broken voice.
"Yes; but speak to David first, mamma."
Rod came forward and offered his arm. He was sorry for the mother's grief, which, however, in such intensity as this, he could not at all understand. But though he was sorry, he was resolute, he was even stern; in his dark beauty, his height and strength, he looked indeed, as Bartholomew had said, a man.
At the sight of his offered arm Mrs. Churchill recoiled; she glanced all round the terrace as though to get away from it; she even glanced at the water; it almost seemed as if she would have liked to take her child and plunge with her to the depths below. But one miserable look at Eva's happy, trustful eyes still watching her lover's face cowed her; she took the offered arm. And then Rod went with her, supporting her gently into the house, and through it to her own room, where he left her with her daughter. That night the mother rose from her sleepless couch, lit a shaded taper, and leaving it on a distant table, stole softly to Eva's side. The girl was in a deep slumber, her head pillowed on her arm. Fanny, swallowing her tears, gazed at her sleeping child. She still saw in the face the baby outlines of years before, her mother's eye could still distinguish in the motionless hand the dimpled fingers of the child. The fair hair, lying on the pillow, recalled to her the short flossy curls of the little girl who had clung to her skirts, who had had but one thought—"mamma."
"What will her life be now? What must she go through, perhaps—what pain, privation—my darling, my own little child!"