"No!" he cried, "but you judge her! And it's so unfair, mother—so horribly unfair!"
He had turned round; he was forcing his mother to look at his now moody, unhappy face.
Mrs. Elwyn shrank back and closed her lips tightly. Her expression recalled to her son the look which used to come over her face when, as a petted, over cared-for only child, he asked her for something which she believed it would be bad for him to have. From that look there had been, in old days, no appeal. But now he felt that he must say something more. His manhood demanded it of him.
"Mother," he said earnestly, "as you have spoken to me of the matter, I feel I must have it out with you! Please believe me when I say that you are being unjust—indeed, cruelly so. I was to blame all through—from the very beginning to the very end."
"You must allow me," she said in a low tone, "to be the judge of that, Hugh." She added deprecatingly, "This discussion is painful, and—and very distasteful to me."
Her son leant back, and choked down the words he was about to utter. He knew well that nothing he could say would change or even modify his mother's point of view. But oh! why had she done this? Why had she chosen to-night, of all nights, to rend the veil which had always hung, so decently, between them. He had felt happy to-night—not madly, foolishly happy, as so many men feel at such moments, but reasonably, decorously pleased with his present and his future. He was making a mariage de convenance, but there had been another man on the lists, a younger man than himself, and that had added a most pleasing zest to the pursuit. He, aided of course by Winifred Fanshawe's prudent parents, had won—won a very pretty, well-bred, well-behaved girl to wife. What more could a man of forty-one, who had lived every moment of his life, ask of that providence which shapes our ends?
The traffic suddenly parted, and the horse leapt forward.
As they reached their own front door, Mrs. Elwyn again spoke: "Perhaps I ought to add," she said hurriedly, "that I know one thing to Mrs. Bellair's credit. I am told that she is a most devoted and careful mother to that little boy of hers. I heard to-day that the child is seriously ill, and that she and the child's nurse are doing everything for him."
Mrs. Elwyn's voice had softened, curiously. She had an old-fashioned prejudice against trained nurses.
Hugh Elwyn helped his mother into the house; then, in the hall, he bent down and just touched her cheek with his lips.