“Well, I’m sorry you don’t like the idea, but I’m afraid I’ve made up my mind,” she said, abruptly and ungraciously.
“Then there is no more to be said, my dear. Perhaps you will be able to explain matters to Miss Wade so that she does not resign her situation, but you are acting with great unfairness towards her. If Cecil is to be taken out of her hands like this, and his whole time upset, you cannot expect her to have any real authority over the child. I was beginning to hope that he was improving in every respect under her management.”
Lady Aviolet’s intonation made it clear that her “every” meant “one.”
“Her latest idea is that he ought to be whipped for telling a story.”
“Painful though that would be, it might be the truest kindness to the poor little fellow himself in the end. But I hope we need not consider the question at all. I really do hope and believe that, under Miss Wade’s management, Cecil is losing his weakness.”
Lady Aviolet’s hope—a plant of frail and ill-supported growth—was not destined to fulfilment.
Rose appeared in the Lucians’ drawing-room one afternoon with swollen eyelids, and said miserably to Henrietta:
“They’ve made me punish Cecil. At least, I suppose it wasn’t them that made me, but I’ve had to do it. And yet I don’t really believe in whipping a child—I was going dead against my own instinct, and I knew it in a sort of way, but it seemed the only thing I hadn’t tried.”
“What happened?”
“Ces—poor darling—told a perfectly flat lie to Ford, of all people, and that beast wanted to punish him himself, but, of course, I said I wouldn’t allow that, and that I was the proper person to do it. But in the end Sir Thomas did. I said he might, because I knew it would impress Ces far more—and, besides, I knew I should howl and cry if I had to hit his darling little body.”