‘I don’t think there is much fear of that. On the contrary, I doubt if our eyes are even yet fully open to the enormity of this morning’s work. I don’t think we any of us realise the hideous indignity to which my father has been subjected. But we should. We should think of it—and of him. Here we have one of the oldest and ablest of Her Majesty’s judges—a man of the widest experience and of the fairest fame, whose name is a synonym for honour and humanity, not only in the Profession, but throughout every section of the community—a man, my dear mother, with whom the very smartest of us—I tell you frankly—would fight shy of a tilt in court, yet whom we all respect and honour; in very truth, “a wise and upright judge,” though I say it who am his son. And what has happened to him? How has he been treated?’ cried Granville. ‘Well, we know. No need to go into that again. Only try to realise it, dear mother; try to realise it. To me there is, I confess, something almost epic in this business!’
‘I don’t wish to realise it; and I don’t know, I am sure, why you should wish to make me.’
‘For no reason,’ said Granville, shrugging his shoulders, and also looking hurt; ‘for no kind of reason, except that it did strike me that my father’s character had never—never, that is, in his home life—come out more strongly or more generously. Why, I should like to lay ruinous odds that he never refers to the matter again, even to you; while, you shall see, his manner to her will not suffer the slightest change in consequence of what has happened.’
‘It would be a terrible thing if it did,’ said Lady Bligh; and she added after a pause: ‘She is so beautiful!’
Granville drummed with his fingers upon the chimney-piece. His mother wanted a reply. She wanted sympathy upon this point; it was a very insignificant point, the Bride’s personal beauty; but as yet it seemed to be the only redeeming feature in Alfred’s unfortunate marriage.
‘You can’t deny that, Gran?’ she persisted.
‘Deny what? The young woman’s prepossessing appearance? Certainly not; nobody with eyes to see could deny that.’
‘And after all,’ said Lady Bligh, ‘brought up as she evidently has been, it would be astonishing indeed if her ways were not wild and strange. Consequently, Gran, there is every hope that she will fall into our ways very soon; is there not?’
‘Oh, of course there is hope,’ said Gran, with an emphasis that was the reverse of hopeful; ‘and there is hope, too, that she will ultimately fall into our way of speaking: her own “mannerisms,” in that respect, are just a little too marked. Oh, yes, there is hope; there is hope.’
Lady Bligh said no more; she seemed to have no more to say. Observing this, Granville consulted his watch, said something about an engagement in town, and went to the door.