‘She is dead,’ said Virginia, in a voice so toneless that it sounded indifferent.
‘How much better,’ thought Stephen, ‘for everybody as well as herself if she were.’
Aloud he said, his face buried in Virginia’s bosom. ‘No. She is not dead. Quite the contrary. She is remarrying.’
And as Virginia said nothing, for her breath was taken away by these blows and counter-blows, he went on: ‘Darling, I would have spared you if I could. I have tried to spare you. I have tried all these days to find some way of keeping it from you. Indeed, indeed I have tried——’
‘But, Stephen—why? Why shouldn’t mother marry again?’ asked Virginia, with the irritability natural to people who have been frightened without cause, but so unusual in her that Stephen could only account for it by her physical condition. ‘I think it very strange of her not to tell me, but why shouldn’t she remarry? Now there’ll be somebody to take care of her. I’m glad.’
‘Darling——’
He pressed his face still closer to her bosom. He wished he could hide it there for ever.
‘But I do think,’ said Virginia, reaction against her mother setting in now she knew she wasn’t dead, as it had set in the day she saw her trotting safe and sound up the avenue when she had been torn by fears of an accident, ‘I do think she might have told me. I do think that.’
Her voice had tears in it. She strangled them, and held herself up very straight, offering no real hospitality to Stephen’s head. She was deeply wounded.
‘Ah, but there are some things one doesn’t tell,’ said Stephen.