"And does this ... this very sad news ... will it make any difference to you, Horatia?"
"Any difference?" repeated she, not catching his real meaning, so completely was she absorbed in thoughts of the dead boy. "Oh, you mean Maurice being the heir now." Utterance failed her and she began to cry again. "O, I can't bear to think of it!"
"Yes," said Tristram's voice, curiously insistent and toneless, "but will it make any difference to you personally ... will you have to go away—to live in France? I thought perhaps..."
"No, O, no, I don't think so." She sighed heavily. "I can do as I please, I think. I suppose I shall be there more often, perhaps ... O Tristram, why is God so cruel?"
He did not take up the challenge, but he looked at her very gravely.
"I do not know," he said. "I ... I must go back and write to poor Emmanuel. I will come for those proofs again, or you can send them. I am going away next week ... when I come back, perhaps..."
The Oxford road saw that evening the return of a man who, in all good faith, had attempted a task beyond his strength, and who was now paying bitterly enough for the discovery.
CHAPTER IX
(1)
From the bottom of Maurice's crib, wherein he lay fast asleep, his favourite rag soldier, sitting propped against the rails, stared at him reproachfully, for the little boy had taken to bed with him, against all precedent, an old black and white wooden horse, long discarded, whose hairless head now lay nose to nose on the pillow with his own. The rag soldier probably felt his world tumbling around him.