“I had no intention of being rude,” said Ralph, standing before her with much the same expression of impatience, curbed by a sense of obligation with which he had always taken her fault-finding.
“I am quite aware that your intentions are always, according to your own account, immaculate,” she said scathingly, “but, unfortunately, your words and actions don’t correspond with them. You have behaved abominably to the man who has fed, and clothed, and housed you all these years, a man who has wasted hundreds of pounds on your schooling.”
“Believe me, I do not forget what he has done for me,” said Ralph eagerly. “I am grateful for it. But he used words of my father which were cruel, words which no son could patiently have listened to.”
“Nothing can excuse the way you have behaved,” said Lady Mactavish, “so say no more about it. What are your plans?”
“I have made none,” said Ralph, “except to go by the six o’clock train.”
“Where are you going?”
“To London,” he replied.
Lady Mactavish glanced at him a little uneasily. She could not without prickings of conscience think of turning this boy adrift.
“Sir Matthew, with his usual kindness and generosity, asked me to give you these,” she said, holding out the bank notes. “Though you have so much disappointed and pained him, he will not let you be sent away without money.”
But Ralph drew back; there was a look in his eyes which half frightened Evereld.