“Body not yet recovered,” he read, and commented with confidence, “It will turn up later, I feel sure. Of course, all this is—news to me; boat—weir—everything. Yes.”
“And I was ill already!” said Lady Charlotte. “There is reason to suppose my heart is weak. I use myself too hard. I am too concerned about many things. I cannot live for myself alone. It is not my nature. The doctor had commanded a quiet month here before I even thought of travel—literally commanded. And then comes this blow. The wretched child could not have chosen a worse time.”
She gave a gesture of despair. She fell back upon her piled pillows with a gesture of furious exhaustion.
“In the last twenty-four hours,” she said, “I have eaten one egg, Mr. Sycamore.... And some of that I left.”
Mr. Sycamore’s note of sympathy was perhaps a little insincere. “Of course,” he said, “in taking the children away from their school—where they were at least safe and happy—you undertook a considerable responsibility.”
Lady Charlotte took him up with emphasis. “I admit no responsibility—none whatever. Understand, Mr. Sycamore, once for all, I am not responsible for—whatever has happened to this wretched little boy. Sorry for him—yes, but I have nothing to regret. I took him away from—undesirable surroundings—and sent him to a school, by no means a cheap school, that was recommended very highly, very highly indeed, by Mr. Grimes. It was my plain duty to do as much. There my responsibility ends.”
Mr. Sycamore had drifted quietly into a chair, and was sitting obliquely to her in an attitude more becoming a family doctor than a hostile lawyer. He regarded the cornice in the far corner of the room as she spoke, and replied without looking at her, softly and almost as if in soliloquy: “Legally—no.”
“I am not responsible,” the lady repeated. “If any one is responsible, it is Mr. Grimes.”
“I came to ask you to produce your two wards,” said Mr. Sycamore abruptly, “because Mr. Oswald Sydenham lands at Southampton tonight.”
“He has always been coming.”