“I have thought. I can understand nothing. They told me that your mother’s checks—”
Even as she spoke, she understood. The knowledge flashed from brain to brain.
“Oh, Dick—your mother!—Mrs. Swinton! Oh!”
“Grandfather drove her to it, Dora. You mustn’t be hard on her.”
“And she let them accuse you—her son—when you were supposed to have died gloriously—oh, horrible!”
“Ah, that’s the worst of being a newspaper hero. The news that I’m home has got abroad somehow, and those journalist fellows are beginning to write me up again. I wish they’d leave me alone. They make things so hard.”
“Dick, you’re not going to ruin your whole career, and blacken your reputation, because your mother hasn’t the courage to stand by her wickedness.”
“It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d do, Dora, I know. But mother’s different. Never had any head for money, and didn’t know what she was doing. She looked upon grandfather’s money as hers and mine.”
“But when they thought you were dead—oh, horrible. It was infamous!”