“She came straight to Seymour Street from here. She saw him alone first; then he called me in. That luxury lasted about an hour.”
“Poor, poor father!” Adela moaned at this; on which her brother remained silent. Then after he had alluded to it as the scene he had lived in terror of all through his cramming, and she had sighed forth again her pity and admiration for such a mixture of anxieties and such a triumph of talent, she pursued: “Have you told him?”
“Told him what?”
“What you said you would—what I did.”
Godfrey turned away as if at present he had very little interest in that inferior tribulation. “I was angry with you, but I cooled off. I held my tongue.”
She clasped her hands. “You thought of mamma!”
“Oh don’t speak of mamma!” he cried as in rueful tenderness.
It was indeed not a happy moment, and she murmured: “No; if you had thought of her—!”
This made Godfrey face her again with a small flare in his eyes. “Oh then it didn’t prevent. I thought that woman really good. I believed in her.”
“Is she very bad?”