"Save her! You would let this sweet establishment go on," he said, with fine sarcasm, "and not disturb them?"
"Yes," she said. "It may be wrong, but I think I would if I could."
"You are mad!" cried the old man. "You have lost all your good sense, and your feeling too. What, your own husband! you would let him go on living in sin—happy——"
She stopped him with a curious kind of authority—a look before which he paused in spite of himself.
"Happy!" she said; "I suppose so; at fifty, after living honestly all these years!"
He stopped and shook his grey head. "I have known such a thing before. It seems as if they must break out—as if common life and duty became insupportable. I have known such a case once before."
She cried out eagerly, "Who was it?" then stopped with a half-smile. "What does it matter to me who it was? The only thing that matters now is the children. What is to be done about the children? I cannot tell them; nor can you, nor any one. Mr Fareham, let him alone; let him be—happy, as you call it—if he can. But the children—what am I to say to the children?" She rose up again, and began to walk about the room, unable to keep still. "Horace, who is a man, and Milly. If they were little things it would not matter; they would not understand."
"And is it possible," said old Fareham, looking at her almost sourly, "that this is the only thing you can think of?—not your own wrongs, nor his abominable behaviour, nor——"
She paused a little, standing by the table. "Oh, you do wrong," she said, "you do wrong! A woman has her pride. If his duty has become—insupportable; it was you who used the word—and life insupportable, do you think a woman like me would hold him to it? Oh, you do wrong! I have put that away. But the children—I cannot put them away! And he was a good father, a kind father. Think of something. If only they might never find out!"
Here her voice gave way, and she could say no more.