“He is most unfitted to have the care of a child,” said Mrs Westonley, icily; “from his conversation I should imagine he would be a most decidedly improper person.”
“But he means well, you know; but, like your poor father, he's a bit too outspoken and rough. And... and Elizabeth, we have no children of our own, and you will get to love the poor little one.”
“I will make no guarantee as to conferring my affections upon a child whose disposition may prove to be utterly unworthy of the tuition and Christian training I have undertaken to give her—at your request,” was the acidulous reply.
Westonley groaned inwardly, but made no answer.
A few months after this conversation, Tom Gerrard made a short visit to Marumbah Downs to see Westonley and his dead sister's child. He had just returned from the little bay near Cape Howe, where the Cassowary had been castaway, and where his father, mother, and Dr Rayner had been buried, together with all the other passengers and members of the crew whose bodies had been washed ashore. After dinner, he, Westonley, and his step-sister, were discussing Captain Gerrard's will, when just then there came in a neighbour of Westonley's—a squatter named Brooke—who was one of the executors. Mrs Westonley received him rather coldly, and when Tom Gerrard began describing to him the situation of the place where his father and mother were interred, she listened with an ill-concealed impatience.
“Well! Mrs Westonley,” said Brooke, stretching out his spurred and booted feet, “your father and mother died together—as they lived, hand in hand, and heart to heart.”
“The late Mrs Gerrard was not my mother.”
There was a dead silence, and then Tom Gerrard rose, and looked his step-sister in the face with undisguised and bitter contempt.
“No, thank God! she was not, but she was mine, I am proud to say.”
Then he held out his hand to Westonley, “Good-bye, Ted, I'm leaving.”