"But you never did care about him, mother?" cried Tatham, outraged by the mere notion of any such thing.
"No—never." There was a deliberate emphasis on the words. The smile that followed was slight but poignant. "I knew that still more plainly, when, six months after I ceased to see him, your father came along."
Tatham who had drawn her hand within his arm, laid his own upon it for a moment. He was in the happy position of a son in whom filial affection represented no enforced piety, but the spontaneous instinct of his nature. His mother had been so far his best friend; and though he rarely spoke of his father his childish recollections of him, and the impression left by his mother's constant and deliberate talk of him, during the boyish years of her son, had entered deep into the bases of character. It is on such feelings and traditions that all that is best in our still feudal English life is reared; Tatham had known them without stint; and in their absence he would have been merely the trivially prosperous young man that he no doubt appeared to the Radical orators of the neighbourhood.
The wood thinned. They emerged from it to see the Helvellyn range lying purple under a southwest sky, and Tatham's gray mare waiting a hundred yards away.
"You have no note?"
Tatham tapped his breast pocket.
"Rather!"
"All right—go along!" Lady Tatham came to a halt. "And Harry—don't call too often! Is this the third visit this week?"
"Oh, but the others were such little ones!" he said eagerly.
"Don't try to go too quick." The tone was serious.