“I do not know why you should say for his father’s sake,” she said at once. “I do not suppose that Anthony’s friends can have allowed a breath of this horrible story to affect them, so that their one wish must be to stand by him for his own sake.”
She stopped and looked at Mr Mannering, who was silent.
“Surely,” said Winifred impetuously, “Mr Pitt has not influenced you!”
“My dear,” said Robert Mannering, looking out towards the low hills, and speaking with a little hesitation, “I think that Anthony had a difficult duty to perform—”
“Yes, yes, go on,” said Winifred, trying to govern her voice.
“And that he shrank from it.”
She could no longer laugh as she had laughed the night before. A sickening feeling came over her. Was this lie actually living, spreading, destroying? Her eyes filled with a rush of tears. She lifted her hand in mute indignation.
“You—his friend!—you believe that!”
He was silent again, and then said slowly,—
“Perhaps neither you nor I are fair judges, Winifred. You naturally think of Anthony, whom you have known all your life, and I think of Margaret Hare. Remember that her child was in all justice the heir, and remember what the poor mother has suffered.”