She passed on into the room, and Frances went out alone.
The old house was full of shadows. She could hear the shrill cries of swallows wheeling about the eaves. The scent of honeysuckle was everywhere. How had she ever thought of it as a prison?
Slowly she went down the stairs, and turned towards the kitchen. As she did so, she heard a sudden sound in the recess in which she had hidden on the night of her flight, and started to see two figures emerge. They were very closely locked together, and she saw that in the dimness she was not observed. Involuntarily almost, she drew back.
“Don’t fret, sweetheart!” It was Oliver’s voice, pitched very low. “It’ll be all right, you’ll see.”
“Oh dear, I do hope so,” came back in a whisper from Maggie. “It doesn’t feel right though I suppose it is.”
“It is right,” the man confidently asserted. “If we can’t choose our circumstances we must adapt ourselves to them. It’s the only way to live.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Maggie somewhat dubiously.
They passed down the passage to the kitchen, leaving Frances standing at the foot of the stairs.
So standing, down the passage to her left that led to the study, she heard a voice—an old man’s voice, broken, pathetic, piteously pleading.
“I assure you—” it said—“I assure you—you are wrong. It is difficult to conceive how you can permit yourself to harbour these monstrous and terrible ideas. I sometimes think your brain is not normal. You are causing the greatest grief both to your mother whom you profess to love—and to myself, for whom I know but too well that all filial affection has long ceased to exist. I am an old man and helpless. Your behaviour is breaking my heart. I shall go down to my grave with the knowledge that my son—my only son—will rejoice to see me laid there.”