His voice, when next he spoke, was almost a groan.
“I cannot see Valeria tonight. God forgive me, I am not master of myself. Your calm shames me, Owen. But it is not natural, not natural. You will, and must, suffer for it later on. Tell me, dear fellow—that I should have to say it!—do you wish to leave us—do you wish to go?”
Owen wished for nothing so much as an immediate adjournment to the dining-room, but he felt that it would indeed be impossible to say so.
“You would not wish me to send Valeria from home, I know. Nor do I know where I could send her.”
“Let her marry Cuscaden,” said Quentillian boldly.
“Never, Owen. Give my child—my weak, untrustworthy child, to a man who could behave as Cuscaden has behaved? Believe me, I appreciate the generosity that prompts you, but you know not what you ask—you know not what you ask.”
Quentillian, entirely unaccustomed to any such accusation, was silently annoyed.
He was also hungry.
“I have sometimes thought,” said the Canon with a trembling voice, “that my tendency has been to idolize my children. I lost their mother so early! You know how it was with me, Owen. Lucilla was my eldest born, my right hand. I have come to depend upon Lucilla, paradoxical though it may sound, from a father towards his child. David, my eldest son ...” the Canon paused a long while, and then murmured softly: “‘Whilst he was yet a great way off’—David is in a far country, but he will return to us yet, and though his Morning Prayer be our Evensong, who shall say that there is separation between us? And I have kept my other children by my side, Owen. Little Flora has never yet tried her wings away from home. She is more like her mother than any of them—she and the dear Adrian.”
A smile like an illumination came into the Canon’s eyes as he spoke Adrian’s name. “The light of mine eyes, that dear lad has always been. My Benjamin! There are no words for what I went through whilst Adrian was fighting, Owen. One could only remember in Whose keeping he was, and that all must be well, in reality. But all one’s faith was needed—it must be so, with poor human nature. The soul goes through dark waters, Owen, as you are finding now.”