Probably the most cruel blow, however, was the one that Clotilde received one summer evening as she was working among the flowers with Stephen at her side. Two people, talking together, passed the gate.
“That is Master Simon’s garden,” said one to the other, who must have been a stranger, and then the speaker added, not realising that Clotilde was close enough to hear:
“It is there that the Widow Radpath dwells with her son.”
So that was what they called her now! Clotilde’s hand closed over the branch of the rose vine that she was holding until the thorns tore her fingers, but she never noticed.
“Mother, what is a widow?” asked Stephen, but he never learned, for she snatched him up in her arms and burst into a passion of tears.
Every day, as the weather grew colder and autumn gales swept through the dead garden, she and Stephen spent long hours at the little round window of the stair-landing, looking and looking out to sea.
“Why are you not watching, Mother?” Stephen would exclaim at times. “Your eyes are shut!”
“Why are you not watching, Mother?”
“I was praying,” Clotilde would explain, “and that is better than watching, little son.”