Mrs Glaire stopped short when they reached the tree, and speaking in a very cold, contemptuous way, she raised her one hand at liberty, and pointing in the direction in which one of the two actors in the little comedy had fled, she said—
“Is this my son Richard?”
“No,” said Dick, with a forced laugh, and with a display of effrontery far from in keeping with his abject looks, “No—that was Daisy Banks.”
“I say, is this my son?” exclaimed Mrs Glaire, speaking in the same cold measured way.
“I suppose so,” said Dick, contemptuously. “There, don’t make a bother out here in the wood;” and he half-turned away to gaze up towards where a thrush was loudly singing its farewell to the day.
“I say is this my son?” reiterated Mrs Glaire, “who promised me upon his word of honour as a gentleman that he would see Daisy Banks no more.”
“Oh aunt,” cried Eve, with almost a shriek of pain, as these words were to her like the lifting of a veil, “did you know of this?”
“Yes,” said Mrs Glaire, sternly, “I knew, my child, that he was playing false to you, and that he was often seeing this miserable girl.”
“There, let her alone,” said Richard, defiantly.
“I knew it, Eve,” continued Mrs Glaire, speaking with suppressed anger; “but on my remonstrating, he promised me that it should all be at an end, and for the time, like a weak, foolish mother, I believed in his honour as a gentleman, and that he would keep his word to me and be faithful to you. You see how he keeps his word.”