The mother looked down at the lovely thing that pressed against her knees. She laid a hand upon her shoulder, and at the touch the girl’s eyes became full of tears. The other felt them warm on the hand that she was pressing to her lips.
There was a long silence.
“Mother,” he said at last, for he noticed that some of the guests of the hotel were strolling about the further edge of the lawn, and they might choose to enter the dining-room by the French window that opened behind his mother’s chair. “Mother, you will not blame either of us. We had both the same feeling that we should make sure of such happiness as we saw awaiting us lest it should be snatched from us by that malignant Fate which delights to spoil a man’s prospects when they seem brightest. That was why I forced Priscilla to marry me on the sly.”
“I knew that you would detest the very name of a registrar, and I could never bring myself to face the ceremony in the church,” said Priscilla. “But indeed I will be as good a daughter to you as if the Church had had a voice in the ceremony. Bless me, even me also, O my mother, and our marriage will be blessed.”
Then the mother fell on her neck, kissing her, and saying:
“It is I who have to ask your forgiveness, dear. I cannot tell you what—I thought—base—base! Oh, my darling, you have made me so happy; you did what was right. I will never accuse you again.”
She was looking up smiling through her tears as she held out a hand to her son.
“I knew that you would not be like other women,” he said. “You are the best woman in the world—the best mother that a man with a mind for wickedness could have. You don’t know all that you have kept me out of. But why did you come to us to-day, mother? Did you suspect—great Gloriana! Here’s your father, Priscilla. A regular family party—what!” Mrs. Wingfield the elder laughed quite spitefully—quite triumphantly as Mr. Wadhurst hurried across the lawn. He had spent half an hour on the beach waiting for the approach of a yacht that was standing off and on in the light breeze. He could not know that the hotel people had made a mistake and that Mr. and Mrs. Wingfield had not left the shore.
He was hurrying across the lawn, and on his face there was a look which his daughter was able to interpret. That was why she spoke before he had time to utter a word.
“Father,” she said, “I don’t think that you ever met my husband, though I daresay you know him by sight as well as he knows you. Jack, this is my father.”