She replied hurriedly, with a slight bow of acquiescence. It was the strangest subject to choose for discussion: but yet it was very difficult to find any subject. “You told me the other day,” she said, “about your children.”
“I am very thankful to you for asking. I wanted to speak of them. I have a boy and girl, with only a year between them—provided for more or less; but who is to look after them when I am gone? Their mother’s family I never got on with. They are the most worldly-minded people. I should not like my little Rosamond to fall into their hands.”
There was a pause: for Evelyn found that she had nothing to say. It was so extraordinary to sit here, the depositary of Edward Saumarez’s confidences, listening to the account of his anxieties—she who was so little likely to be of any help.
“How old is she?” she managed to ask at last.
“Rosamond? How long is it since we were—so much together? A long time. I dare say more than twenty years.”
“Something like that.”
“Ah well,” he said with a sigh, “I married about a year after. They’re nineteen and twenty, or thereabouts. Rosamond, they tell me, ought to be brought out; but what is the good of bringing out a girl into the world who has no one to protect her? Nobody but a worldly-minded aunt who will sell her for what she will bring—marry her off her hands as quickly as possible; that is all she will think of. It may seem strange to you, but my little girl is proud of me, dreadful object as I am.”
“Why should it seem strange? It would be very unnatural if she was not.”
“She is the only one in the world who cares a brass farthing whether I live or die.” As Evelyn raised her eyes full of pity, she was suddenly aware that he was watching her, watching for some tell-tale flush or gesture which should give a tacit denial to what he said. He, like Lady Leighton, was of opinion that a woman never forgets, and dreadful object as he allowed himself to be, the man’s vanity would fain have been fed by some sign that the woman beside him, whom he had abandoned so basely, whose heart he had done his best to break, still cherished something of the old feeling, and was his still. He was disconcerted by the calm compassion in her eyes.
“Eddy is as cold as a stone,” he said; “he is like his mother’s people. He doesn’t see why an old fellow like me should keep dragging on. He minds no more than Jarvis does—less, for I am Jarvis’s living, and to keep me alive is the best thing for him. But it would be better for Eddy, he thinks, if I were out of the way.”