"I know very little about him, of course, having been always so much abroad; but he looks like a man who could be painfully faithful to an attachment of that kind."
"He was not faithful to her, at all events. I daresay he fell in love with some other girl about that time, and slighted my mother for her."
"Well," says Mr. Desmond, drawing a deep breath, "he is 'a grand man!'"
"I think he must be a very horrid old man," replies Monica, severely.
"You have proofs of his iniquity, of course," says Brian, presently, who evidently finds a difficulty in believing in his uncle's guilt.
"Yes. He wrote her a letter, stating in distinct terms that"—and here she alters her voice until it is highly suggestive of Miss Blake's fine contralto—"'he deemed it expedient for both parties that the present engagement existing between them should be annulled.' Those are Aunt Priscilla's words; what he really meant, I suppose, was that he was tired of her."
"Your mother, I should imagine, was hardly a woman to be tired of readily."
"That is a matter of opinion. We—that is, Terry and Kit and I—thought her a very tiresome woman indeed," says Miss Beresford, calmly. She does not look at him as she makes this startling speech, but looks beyond him into, possibly, a past where the "tiresome woman" held a part.
Brian Desmond, gazing at her pale, pure, spiritual face, sustains a faint shock, as the meaning of her words reaches him. Is she heartless, emotionless? Could not even a mother's love touch her and wake her into life and feeling?
"You weren't very fond of your mother, then?" he asks, gently. The bare memory of his own mother is adored by him.