He went on:
“I've brought him up as I was brought up myself. I never thought to have had a scamp for my son!”
Mrs. Pendyce's heart stopped fluttering.
“How dare you, Horace!” she cried.
The Squire, letting go the bed-rail, paced to and fro. There was something savage in the sound of his footsteps through the utter silence.
“I've made up my mind,” he said. “The estate——”
There broke from Mrs. Pendyce a torrent of words:
“You talk of the way you brought George up! You—you never understood him! You—you never did anything for him! He just grew up like you all grow up in this——” But no word followed, for she did not know herself what was that against which her soul had blindly fluttered its wings. “You never loved him as I do! What do I care about the estate? I wish it were sold! D'you think I like living here? D'you think I've ever liked it? D'you think I've ever——” But she did not finish that saying: D'you think I've ever loved you? “My boy a scamp! I've heard you laugh and shake your head and say a hundred times: 'Young men will be young men!' You think I don't know how you'd all go on if you dared! You think I don't know how you talk among yourselves! As for gambling, you'd gamble too, if you weren't afraid! And now George is in trouble——”
As suddenly as it had broken forth the torrent of her words dried up.
Mr. Pendyce had come back to the foot of the bed, and once more gripped the rail whereon the candle, still and bright, showed them each other's faces, very changed from the faces that they knew. In the Squire's lean brown throat, between the parted points of his stiff collar, a string seemed working. He stammered: