“Oh, Wilfrid!”
He seemed to her to be uttering blasphemy.
“It’s better you should know it. My dear mother didn’t understand me in the least. My whole up-bringing was a ghastly blunder. If I’d been let live a decent life, like any other boy, like any other man, I might have been good for something. But she wouldn’t let me. She pretended there was something the matter with me when there wasn’t, so that she could keep me dependent on her.”
“Wilfrid dear, it may have been a blunder and it may have been ghastly—”
“It was.”
“But it was only her love for you.”
“A very selfish sort of love, Effie.”
“Oh don’t,” she cried. “Don’t. She’s dead, Wilfrid.”
“I’m not likely to forget it.”
“You talk as if you’d forgotten— If the dead knew—”