“Think of something else,” said Markham, with a sudden recovery. “I always find that the best thing to do—for the moment. What was Claude saying to you—and t’other man?”
“Claude! I don’t know what he was saying. News like this is enough to drive everything else out of one’s head. He is wavering between Con and Frances.”
“Mother, I told you. Frances will have nothing to say to him.”
“Frances—will obey the leading of events, I hope.”
“Poor little Fan! I don’t think she will, though. That child has a great deal in her. She shows her parentage.”
“Sir Thomas says she reminds him much of her—father,” Lady Markham said, with a faint smile.
“There is something of Waring too,” said her son, nodding his head.
This seemed to jar upon the mother. She changed colour a little; and then added, her smile growing more constrained: “He thinks she may be a powerful instrument in—changing his mind—bringing him, after all these years, back”—here she paused a little, as if seeking for a phrase; then added, her smile growing less and less pleasant—“to his duty.”
Then Markham for the first time looked at her. He had been paying but partial attention up to this moment, his mind being engrossed with difficulties of his own; but he awoke at this suggestion, and looked at her with something of his usual keenness, but with a gravity not at all usual. And she met his eye with an awakening in hers which was still more remarkable. For a moment they thus contemplated each other, not like mother and son, nor like the dear and close friends they were, but like two antagonists suddenly perceiving, on either side, the coming conflict. For almost the first time there woke in Lady Markham’s mind a consciousness that it was possible her son, who had been always her champion, her defender, her companion, might wish her out of his way. She looked at him with a rising colour, with all her nerves thrilling, and her whole soul on the alert for his next words. These were words which he would have preferred not to speak; but they seemed to be forced from his lips against his will, though even as he said them he explained to himself that they had been in his mind to say before he knew—before the dilemma that might occur had seemed possible.
“Yes?” he said. “I understand what he means. I—even I—had been thinking that something of the sort—might be a good thing.”