Mary looked at her curiously, and a pause of silence fell, during which the triumphant progress of the storm seemed to gather and swell abroad like a trumpet blast without the dark window.
Presently Mary said in a moved and barely audible voice—
"Madam—about your son—have you ever thought that you would—forgive me—but he was nothing but pain to you——"
She paused, and Lady Sunderland answered from a kind of self-absorption—
"I did my best. It all seemeth so pointless now we are ruined—I thought of the name, but there is his brother—a cold, hard spirit who hath no kindness for me."
Mary was looking at her intently.
"That must be terrible," she said, breathing quick. "To have children who love one not—do you not think, perhaps, Madam, that it might be better—to—to have none?"
Suddenly Lady Sunderland saw what she meant, divined the desperate appeal for comfort disguised in the halting sentence.
"I do think so, truly, Madam," she answered instantly. "My children have, for all my care, been but discomfort to me."
"But there was the time when they were little," said Mary, with a note in her voice that caused Lady Sunderland to turn away her face. "And you must have been glad of them—I—ah, I forgot what I was saying."