Her mother looked at her as if she could hardly understand, and then dropped senseless. A second later Bob Russell carried her upstairs, and laid her on her bed. Gwen stayed with Kathleen until she had come round, and then slipped away to the drawing-room again, feeling utterly unstrung. Doreen and her fiancé were fortunately out to lunch.
“It was Lawrence,” she said, in reply to Bob’s anxious questions; “he must have been terrible, and to her, his own mother! Oh, it is awful, Bob,” and the tears streamed down her face again. Bob sprang to his feet.
“Shall I go and throttle him!—the worm! A man who can behave like that to his mother, isn’t fit to live. I’ll go and tell him so—I’ll—I’ll—”
“Oh, no, no, no,” cried Gwen, “you don’t understand. It is dreadful of him, but he is mad about something. I knew it, and I tried to stop her.”
The giant went on muttering imprecations, however, and Owen had hard work to hold him when presently that distant door slammed again. She crossed to the window quickly, and was just in time to see Lawrence stride down the drive, with that terrible fixed look still on his face.
No one sat down to dinner that night, except Kathleen, and Gwen, and Bob Russell. Mrs Blake was too ill, and Lawrence did not come back. Doreen and her barrister were still away.
Kathleen was in a state of pent-up fury, which now and then burst its bounds in passionate indictment against her brother. “Why can’t he stay away,” she said, “if he can’t behave like a gentleman? I’m sure we don’t want him here, he is always a wet blanket, and upsets mother about something or other every day. It has been the same ever since he went to college. He doesn’t care for anything in heaven or earth except himself; I’m sick of it. If he doesn’t go away and stay away, I’ll just take mother to live somewhere else altogether.”
Gwen was much too fond of Lawrence and much too staunch to her friends not to speak a word for him in spite of her own inward anger.
“There is a reason for it, Kit,” she said. “Don’t judge him to-day. He’ll be all right again presently.”
“Until the next time,” with an angry sneer, very like her brother’s. “I tell you it isn’t good enough, Owen. He’s not going to behave like this to mother again, I’ll get between them if he kills me for it. What has he ever been to her but a curse?—drinking, and gambling, and idling about the world. Oh, I dare say he’s charming enough to you always! we all know there isn’t a man could be more fascinating when he likes, but how much does that go for beside scenes like this?”