“Yes, you intimated that. In your business.”
“Speculations,” said Hallam quietly. “There, that will do.”
“But, Robert—”
“That will do!” he roared fiercely. “Stephen Crellock must live here! Do you hear—must! Now go to bed.”
“A woman’s duty,” she whispered softly, “is to obey,” and she obeyed.
She obeyed, while another six months glided away, each month filling her heart more and more with despair as she shunned her child’s questioning eyes and fought on, a harder battle every day, to keep herself in the belief that the pure gold was still beneath the blackening tarnish, and that her idol was not made of clay.
It was a terrible battle, for her eyes refused to be blinded longer by the loving veil she cast over them. The appealing, half-wondering looks of her child increased her suffering, while an idea, that filled her with horror, was growing day by day, till it was assuming proportions from which she shrank in dread.