“Shall I go round at once and give it her well? I’d really enjoy it.”
In a low, serious voice—such a voice as she had not used to him for months—Mrs. Herriton said, “Caroline has been extremely impertinent. Yet there may be something in what she says after all. Ought the child to grow up in that place—and with that father?”
Philip started and shuddered. He saw that his mother was not sincere. Her insincerity to others had amused him, but it was disheartening when used against himself.
“Let us admit frankly,” she continued, “that after all we may have responsibilities.”
“I don’t understand you, Mother. You are turning absolutely round. What are you up to?”
In one moment an impenetrable barrier had been erected between them. They were no longer in smiling confidence. Mrs. Herriton was off on tactics of her own—tactics which might be beyond or beneath him.
His remark offended her. “Up to? I am wondering whether I ought not to adopt the child. Is that sufficiently plain?”
“And this is the result of half-a-dozen idiocies of Miss Abbott?”
“It is. I repeat, she has been extremely impertinent. None the less she is showing me my duty. If I can rescue poor Lilia’s baby from that horrible man, who will bring it up either as Papist or infidel—who will certainly bring it up to be vicious—I shall do it.”
“You talk like Harriet.”