"Yes, I had."
"What's the good of telling lies?"
"It's no good telling the truth," Robert answered stolidly. "They only get crosser than ever. She hadn't any right to hit me. She's not even a relation."
"She's your step-mother."
He began to tremble again uncontrollably.
"She's n-not. Not any sort of a mother. My mother's dead."
It was the first time he had ever said it, even to himself. It threw a chill over him, so that for a moment he stopped thinking of Edith and his coming black revenge. He had done something that could never be undone. He had closed and locked a great iron door in his mother's face. "She's just a beast," he repeated stubbornly. "I'd like to kill her."
Frances considered him with her head a little on one side. It was like her not to enter into any argument. One couldn't tell what she was thinking. And yet one knew that she was feeling things.
"I'd wipe that blood off," she said. "It's trickling on to your collar. No, not with your hand. Where's your hanky?"
He tried to look contemptuous. He did, in fact, despise handkerchiefs. The nice little girls in the Terrace had handkerchiefs, ostentatiously clean. He had seen them, and they filled his soul with loathing. Now he was ashamed. It seemed that even Frances expected him to have a handkerchief.