"Did he tell you how my father pleaded with him, offered to do or to be anything, if only he might be allowed to marry my mother?"
Arthur shook his head. "No, he didn't tell me that. What was his objection?" he said.
"My father never knew—unless it was that my mother had no money of her own. I only know what Uncle Joe told me, of course, but he heard all about it at the time. I don't believe that he had any real objection. You can never be sure whether he will say yes or no to anything, but you may be quite certain whichever it is, that he will stick to it afterwards whatever happens. And he said 'No' to my father, and turned him out of the house because he was willing to give up anything in the world rather than my mother. And when he had been gone about a month he sent that elephant's foot that stands in the hall. He meant it as an insult. Uncle Joe says that they were afraid to tell him. They all knew what it meant, of course; that it was a sort of symbol of his methods. But he wasn't the least bit insulted. He seemed to be proud of it, and had it put where it is now, for every one to see."
She had been speaking rapidly, almost fiercely, with an excitement completely unlike her usual rather staid manner.
"But why have you gone on staying there if you feel like that?" Arthur asked.
She put her hands up to her face for a moment and then looked at him with a whimsical smile. "You aren't the only person who has been blind," she said.
"Do you mean that you have only been feeling like that just lately?" he asked.
"I was only seven when I came," she said, "and I was brought up there. I never went to school. And you take things for granted when you're brought up in a place because it's the only world you know, and you think the others must be much about the same. I did begin to wake up a little in the last year of the war, but even then it all seemed natural enough in a way. He was so old, and one made all sorts of excuses for him. And then, of course, for months or even years at a time he seems to be as sweet and gentle as any one could be. He can be most awfully kind to people...." She paused on a reflective note, as if she still sought excuses for him.
"But what happened to make you change your mind just lately?" Arthur prompted her.
She blushed vividly, and again turned her eyes towards the lavender distances of the downs. "I've really seen the thing happening for myself," she said in a low voice. "I'd had hints from Uncle Joe before, plenty of them; but like you I didn't believe them. There was more excuse for me. I had been brought up with it. I believed he was odd, eccentric. He might seem rather cruel sometimes; but I thought, as I suppose you do still, that he was really trying to do the best for every one."