“You say that, and yet you aren’t really opposing her.”
“Me? No,” said Mrs. Mar, fixing him with unflinching eyes. “I’m making up the deficit.”
Cheviot had never before longed to murder a fellow creature. “You realize, of course,” he said quietly, “she isn’t even sure of finding her father alive.” Angry as he was, when he saw the look that thrust brought to Mrs. Mar’s face, he was sorry he had presented it so mercilessly. “What she’ll probably find,” he hurried on to say, “is that Mr. Mar has gone to the Casa da Paga. That was his plan. Or the Fox River—or God knows where.”
“If she goes as far as Nome, she’ll be able to go still further,” said Hildegarde’s mother, though her voice wasn’t as steady as her words implied.
“I understand you, then, at last!” Cheviot stopped before her with anger-lit eyes. “You are ready to see a young girl—”
“Not every girl.”
“A girl like Hildegarde.”
“Precisely, one like Hildegarde. She can do it.”
“Poor Hildegarde!” burst from his lips, and the implication, “to have a mother like you,” would have pierced many a maternal breast. But it glanced off Mrs. Mar’s armor and fell pointless.