It was easier, however, to make this resolve than to act upon it.
“Rose, you don’t look at all well,” said my father, as we sat over our evening meal. “You have knocked yourself up nursing that common place young woman. I might have told you that would be the case. If you go on in this erratic fashion you will be old before your time.”
Even this rather gruff notice from my father was so unusual that I quite blushed with pleasure.
“I will not let him be humiliated,” I said to myself. “After all he is my father. Hard he is—sometimes cruel—but always, always the very soul of honour. I must—I will save him from what would bring his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.”
My eyes travelled slowly from my father’s face to George’s.
George was also hard. George could also be cruel, but he at least was young. George might share my burden. If George knew, it would be his interest to keep the thing quiet, and I felt sure that where I was powerless to keep my father from turning even a hair’s-breadth from his own way, George might have many means of influencing him.
After dinner I came up to where George was idly reading the newspaper.
“Can I speak to you before you go to bed?” I said, in a low voice.
“What about?” he asked, crossly.
“I can’t tell you in this room. Will you come to my bedroom before you go to sleep?”