“You are morbid,” he said, “and although I am sure you do not wish to be so, that makes you unjust, makes you pass hard judgments.”
“Doubtless it is true,” she replied, with a sigh, “and I thank you for telling me my faults. Yes, Rupert, I am morbid, unjust, a passer of hard judgments, who must endure hard judgment,” and she bowed her stately, gold-crowned head as before the appointed stroke of wrath, then held out her hand and said simply: “Good-bye, Rupert! I do not suppose that you will often come to see me more—ach! why should you? Still if you do, you will be welcome, for on you I pass no hard judgments, and never shall, whatever they say of you.”
So he shook her hand and went away saddened.
Giving his mother his arm, for she was very infirm, Rupert led her quietly out of a side door and down the long passages to her room, which was next to his own at the end of the house, for stairs being difficult to her, she slept on the ground floor, and he at hand to keep her company.
“Mother,” he said, when he had put her in her chair and stirred the fire to a blaze, “I have something to tell you.”
She looked up quickly, for her alarm had returned, and said: “What is it, Rupert?”
“Don’t look frightened, dear,” he replied, “nothing bad, something very good, very happy. I am engaged to be married to Edith, and I have come to ask your blessing on me, or rather on both of us, for she is now a part of me.”
“Oh, Rupert, you have that always,” she answered, sinking back in her chair; “but I am astonished.”
“Why?” he asked, in a vexed voice, for he had expected a flow of enthusiasm that would match his own, not this chilly air of wonderment.
“Because—of course, nobody ever told me so—but I always understood that it was Dick Learmer whom Edith cared for, that is why I never thought anything of her little empressé ways with you.”