“Will you sit down? No? Do you mind if I do? I am very tired. I suppose it is about Lily?”
“Yes. I can't stand it any longer. I can't.”
Sitting under the lamp she saw that he looked very old and very weary. A tired little old man, almost a broken one.
“She won't come back?”
“Not under the conditions. But she must come back, father. To let her stay on there, in that house, after last night—”
She had never called him “father” before. It seemed to touch him.
“You're a good woman, Grace,” he said, still heavily. “We Cardews all marry good women, but we don't know how to treat them. Even Howard—” His voice trailed off. “No, she can't stay there,” he said, after a pause.
“But—I must tell you—she refuses to give up that man.”
“You are a woman, Grace. You ought to know something about girls. Does she actually care for him, or is it because he offers the liberty she thinks we fail to give her? Or”—he smiled faintly—“is it Cardew pig-headedness?”
Grace made a little gesture of despair.