Mrs. Allestree’s face changed sharply. “In White’s motor-car?” the old woman glanced after the vanishing juggernaut with an eloquent expression. “Society is curious now-a-days! White has behaved outrageously; I suppose you’ve heard of the divorce project?”
Rose nodded. “Gerty told me.”
“So she did me,” said Mrs. Allestree grimly, “in strict confidence, of course!”
They looked at each other and laughed helplessly.
“Poor Gerty, she tells everything!” said Rose; “but she’s so good hearted.”
“My dear child,” remarked Mrs. Allestree, “the longer you live the more convinced you’ll be that good-hearted people and fools are blood relations. Of course White has behaved dreadfully, we all know it—but the Lord knows Margaret has provoked him beyond endurance many a time! I shall speak to her about the children. Robert says I sha’n’t; he’ll have me locked up first, that it’s none of my business. A pretty way to speak to his old mother! I can’t help it, I shall ask her to remember her poor little children.”
“I’m afraid they’re an awful burden to her, anyway,” rejoined Rose soberly.
“Oh, I’ll admit that it’s an affliction, a downright scourging of the Almighty’s, to have them look so much like old Mrs. White! But she’s got to consider them; she brought them into the world, poor, little, homely souls! Estelle always reminds me of a little pink-eyed rabbit! As for the divorce, it will be a hideous scandal!” and the old lady’s bright eyes glanced quickly at Rose. She was wondering if she had heard that Mrs. Wingfield said that Fox was the cause of it. It was cruel, it couldn’t possibly be true, but it was sure to gain credence and Mrs. Wingfield knew it!
William Fox was her own nephew, she was proud of him and she loved him, but she was torn between her desire to see her son happy and to shield her nephew. Her thin old lips opened once to speak and closed again quickly; no, she dared not! What was in the child’s heart? Rose was such a child and her father had brought her up so unlike other girls, she was sure to take the man’s view, the hard, flat, ethical view of Stephen Temple, and Mrs. Allestree felt, with some secret amusement, that she would as soon try to argue with the devil as with the judge when once his feet were planted in the straight and narrow path, the old, blue Presbyterian path, as the old woman called it, with her whimsical smile.
Ah, if Rose had only loved Robert as any well regulated young woman would! But Robert’s mother had few self deceptions on that point; she had eyes and she had used them.