For now, when it was too late, she loved him—not with any love of earth; that was spoilt for her—but with a grave amorousness kin to that of the Saints, the passion that the Magdalen might have felt for Christ. The earthly love should have been Edward's, too, and would have run in the footsteps of the other love, like a young creature after its mother. But Reddin had intervened.
'First,' Edward said, 'you must have some food and a cup of tea.'
He never wavered in tenderness to her. But she noticed that he did not say 'dear,' nor did he, bringing her in, take her hand.
Breakfast was an agony to Edward, for his mother, who had from the first treated Hazel with silent contempt as a sinner, now stood, on entering with the toast, and said:
'I will not eat with that woman.'
'Mother!'
'If you bring that woman here, I will be no mother to you.'
'Mother! For my sake!'
'She is a wicked woman,' went on Mrs. Marston, in a calm but terrible voice; 'she is an adulteress.'
Edward sprang up.