“I never thought, Caryl, that she could have left you,” he said in a low voice.
And Rhoda, bending suddenly very low over the child, hid her face and whispered:
“Caryl, you’re don’t know what you’re asking, dear, but—I’ll stay.”
CHAPTER XIII.
SIR ROBERT SEEKS ADVICE
Sir Robert was watching the pair curiously: noting the feverish gladness with which the boy clung to Rhoda’s hand, and the tenderness with which she, in return, bent over him.
It cost him a sharp pang to think that this was just the sort of way in which he should have liked his wife to bend over their invalid son. There was a motherly kindness in Rhoda’s every look and touch, as she smoothed the boy’s pillow or smiled at him, that realised completely Sir Robert’s ideal of what a mother ought to be to her child.
Yet it was a stranger in blood who filled this office to the boy, and the visits of Caryl’s mother were hasty affairs, undertaken in the intervals of the serious business of life, motoring, tennis-playing, dancing, travelling.
It was impossible that a bitter thought should not come into his mind at the sight.
Caryl turned his head, with a smile, to his father.
“I thought it would be all right, papa,” said he, “when you came.”