‘I think I was wrong about those letters,’ he said, continuing to jab his pen into the blotting-paper. ‘I ought to have let her have them.’
‘I don’t at all agree with you. We did what we thought right, and more than that no mortal can be expected to do.’
‘No doubt. But we were mistaken, perhaps, as to what was right.’
‘Nonsense, Stephen. The child is only nineteen. She has to be protected from the influence of that woman. You caught the woman out yourself in the most scandalous, the most disgraceful immorality, and now you propose to countenance her and her—well, really there is only one word for him—her paramour.’
‘They are married. They have expiated their sin.’
‘Her late paramour, then.’
‘For Virginia’s sake they must be countenanced.’
‘How?’ asked Mrs. Colquhoun, greatly exasperated. Here was her son every bit as morbid as her daughter-in-law, and with no excuse of being in any particular month.
‘I am going to ask Virginia to write and invite them to pay us a visit.’
‘Here?’