Inez started.
“Ry!” she said. “Haven’t you been listening to what I was saying?”
“Did you know, Inez?” repeated her brother.
Inez looked at him, in a curious expression on her face.
“Yes, Ry, I knew,” she said quietly.
“Who told you?”
“Mother—but she made me promise not to breathe a word about it to anyone.”
“Why should you know, and not me? Surely I had a right to know if anyone had.”
“I think father didn’t want anyone at all to know—out of kindness really—people of that generation—Victorians—had odd ideas about its being shameful to be the child of an unmarried mother.”
There was silence for a minute or more as Ryland sat with a look of deepening bitterness, staring into the fire.