"As I looked to—you!" There it was—the old ghost, called up to haunt his present as it had waylaid his past. His hand fumbled for the discarded eye-shade and adjusted it as he slowly said:
"I have never counted myself a pattern, Charlotte—least of all for my own son."
She caught the note of pain and weariness now in his voice, and something new and unaccustomed stirred for one brief moment in her heart. She had struck harder than she had intended. But she had lost control at a critical moment and old bitterness, that had never been tinctured with the sweetness of charity and forgiveness, had sharpened her tongue. Now his shocked white face smote her with a sense of self-reproach whose very strangeness threw her momentarily off her poise. For a fleeting second words trembled on her tongue that might have dissolved the icy barrier between them. But the golden second passed.
"That is generous," she said with a distant laugh.
"No doubt Chilly will profit by experience, if not by precept. Shall you be at court to-morrow?"
"Yes," he answered. "I have a hearing."
"You will prefer the horses, then," she said, turning to the door. "I will take the electric for my shopping. Good night."
He opened the door for her. "Good night," he said.