“Danger to Rosamund and Frances Grantham,” said Frederick acidly, turning out his reading lamp.
Bertha Tregaskis remained long in the library after he had gone upstairs. She knew that her husband’s opposition would find no further expression in words, and that her authority with the children would remain undisputed.
With a sigh she turned to the papers on her desk, and wrote steadily for nearly two hours, directing, encouraging, organizing, and again advising. Finally she spent some fifteen minutes on a letter to Lady Argent, of which the final page may be quoted:
“So you see, Sybil, my dear, it’s not going to be quite all plain sailing. But then one never expected that, and the privilege of giving is so great that one doesn’t count the cost. After all, in all this sad old earth, the one and only thing that counts is Love, and the realest, most sacred form of it, when all’s said and done, is that of a mother for her children. Most of us find that out too late, but I don’t mean my bairns to if I can help it!
“Good-night, my dear, it’s close on twelve and I’m dead to the world. Just one look at my three, and then to bed.”
IV
“WELL, Nina, you see I’ve trebled my responsibilities,” observed Mrs. Tregaskis to her greatest friend.
The greatest friend leant back in her chair and looked exquisitely sympathetic.
“I know,” she murmured, in tones which prevented the words from sounding too blatantly non-committal.
“You may say that I had my hands fairly full already, one way and another,” said Bertha, who was frequently obliged to resort to this oblique method of dragging to light Nina Severing’s opinion, in order to set it right. “But one simply couldn’t help it. Those poor little things orphaned, and with no alternative but a cheap school. I must own I acted on impulse—which I’m rather apt to do, I’m afraid, though I deplore the tendency—but somehow one hasn’t quite outgrown one’s youthful impetuosity——”