"It's no good trying to explain that side of it then," Christopher said, "there isn't time. But you're wrong in thinking Sylvia made it a condition of our marriage. Nothing would have made me consent then. It has made her a happy woman that I have. The poor thing thought our house was under a curse for want of a Papist heir."
"What made ye consent now?" Mark asked.
"I've told you," Christopher said, "it was getting my cheque returned to the club; that on the top of the rest of it. A fellow who can't do better than that had better let the mother bring up the child. . . . Besides, it won't hurt a Papist boy to have a father with dishonoured cheques as much as it would a Protestant. They're not quite English."
"That's true too," Mark said.
He stood still by the railings of the public garden near the Temple station.
"Then," he said, "if I'd let the lawyers write and tell you the guarantee for your overdraft from the estate was stopped as they wanted to, the boy wouldn't be a Papist? You wouldn't have overdrawn."
"I didn't overdraw," Christopher said. "But if you had warned me I should have made enquiries at the bank and the mistake wouldn't have occurred. Why didn't you?"
"I meant to," Mark said. "I meant to do it myself. But I hate writing letters. I put it off. I didn't much like having dealings with the fellow I thought you were. I suppose that's another thing you won't forgive me for?"
"No. I shan't forgive you for not writing to me," Christopher said. "You ought to write business letters."
"I hate writing 'em," Mark said. Christopher was moving on. "There's one thing more," Mark said. "I suppose the boy is your son?"