“And doesn’t Lady Sarah care for her boy too?”
The housekeeper’s face altered a little in expression.
“Of course she does,” she replied diplomatically. “But there’s different ways of caring, and the sight of him with his little couch and his spinal chair, well, it hurts my lady, who would have liked to have a boy handsome and tall and strong.”
Rhoda felt chilled.
“It’s a pity she ever married Sir Robert,” she cried impulsively.
The housekeeper looked rather shocked.
“Well, miss, he wouldn’t let her be till she’d promised him, he was so much in love,” she said quickly. “And anyhow, he’s pleased his fancy. He married the lady he liked best.”
“Yes.”
Another question was on Rhoda’s tongue, but it was one she was shy of uttering.
It took a different form from the one at first in her mind when at last she said, timidly: