"Oh, go," said his mother. "If he does play a trick you will know how to meet it. It would be very like him to play some trick," she added, thoughtfully.
"Mother," said Tatham impetuously, "was Melrose ever in love with you?"
He coloured boyishly as he spoke. Lady Tatham looked up startled; a faint red appeared in her cheeks also.
"I believe he supposed himself to be. I knew him very well, and I might—possibly—have accepted him—but that some information came to my knowledge. Then, later on, largely I think to punish me, he nearly succeeded in entangling my younger sister—your Aunt Edith. I stood in his way. He hates me, of course. I think he suffered. In those days he was very different. But his pride and self-will were always a madness. And gradually they have devoured everything else." She paused. "I cannot tell you anything more, Harry. There were other people concerned."
"Dearest, as if I should ask! He did my mother no injury?"
Under the shadow of the woods the young man threw his arm round her shoulders, looking down upon her with a proud tenderness.
"None. I escaped; and I won all along the line. I was neither to be pitied—nor he," she added slowly, "though I daresay he would put down his later mode of life to me."
"As if any woman could ever have put up with him!"
Lady Tatham's expression showed a mind drawn back into the past.
"When I first saw him, he was a magnificent creature. For several years I was dazzled by him. Then when I—and others—broke with him, he turned his back on England and went to live abroad. And gradually he quarrelled with everybody who had ever known him."