“Quite so, but meantime a trial is coming on,” said her son hotly, “and the notion of most of us is that we’d better pull together and help one another through, instead of being disagreeable. Are you going to talk like that in the witness-box?”
“Why should I be in the witness-box?”
“To confirm certain points in our evidence.”
“I have nothing to do with your ludicrous law courts,” she said, angry. “I will not be dragged in at all.”
“I won’t have her dragged in, either; I won’t have any more trouble on my account,” cried Adela, and again took the hand, which was again withdrawn. “Her evidence is not the least essential.”
“I thought she would want to give it. No one blames you, mother, but the fact remains that you dropped off at the first cave, and encouraged Adela to go on with him alone, whereas if you’d been well enough to keep on too nothing would have happened. He planned it, I know. Still, you fell into his trap just like Fielding and Antony before you. . . . Forgive me for speaking so plainly, but you’ve no right to take up this high and mighty attitude about law courts. If you’re ill, that’s different; but you say you’re all right and you seem so, in which case I thought you’ld want to take your part, I did really.”
“I’ll not have you worry her whether she’s well or ill,” said Adela, leaving the sofa and taking his arm; then dropped it with a sigh and sat down again. But he was pleased she had rallied to him and surveyed his mother patronizingly. He had never felt easy with her. She was by no means the dear old lady outsiders supposed, and India had brought her into the open.
“I shall attend your marriage, but not your trial,” she informed them, tapping her knee; she had become very restless, and rather ungraceful. “Then I shall go to England.”
“You can’t go to England in May, as you agreed.”
“I have changed my mind.”