“And supposing I decline to answer you?” asked Madge, suddenly flashing out.
“I don’t think you can do that. You see I am your mother; as such, I think I have a right to know what you propose to do.”
Madge covered her eyes with her hand for a moment. The question had to be answered; she knew that, and she knew also that unless Evelyn made a further sign she could do nothing. If his love for her, as she doubted not at all, was real, he must approach her again. Here then were all the data for her answer.
“No,” she said. “I shall do nothing, because there is no need. He must——” And she broke off. Then she got up with a sudden swift movement.
“You put it coarsely, you make cast-iron of it all, mother,” she said, “when you ask me if I intend to write to him and tell him. Of course I do not.”
“Nor see him?” pursued Lady Ellington.
“If he asks to see me I shall see him,” said she. “And if his object is to say again what he said to-day, I shall tell him.”
Now to get news, even if it is not very satisfactory, is better than not getting news. In uncertainty there is no means of telling how to act, and whatever the contingency—a contingency known is like a danger known—it can perhaps be guarded against, and it can certainly be faced. How to guard against this Lady Ellington did not at the moment see, but she knew that danger lay here.
“And from that moment you will break off your engagement with Philip?” she asked.
There was no need here of any reply, and Lady Ellington continued: