‘I’m not quite so feeble a creature as you think me.’
‘You would rather have the child to yourself, than be living away from him?’
‘If you have made up your mind, why trouble to ask such questions?’
‘Because I have no wish to force burdens upon you. You said just now that you could see little prospect of freedom in such a life as I have to offer you. I thought you perhaps meant that the care of the child would—’
‘I meant nothing,’ Nancy broke in, with fretful impatience.
‘Where is he—our boy?’
‘At Dulwich. I told you that in my last letter.’
‘Yes—yes. I thought you might have changed.’
‘I couldn’t have found a better, kinder woman. Can you guess how many answers I had to the advertisement? Thirty-two.’
‘Of course five-and-twenty of them took it for granted you would pay so much a week and ask no questions. They would just not have starved the baby,—unless you had hinted to them that you were willing to pay a lump sum for a death-certificate, in which case the affair would have been more or less skilfully managed.’