‘Without anyone to stand by him or say a word, without love or succour,’ he cried. Was there not another side to the question? He thought she drew herself away from him with a renewed movement of alarm, and he rose from her side, too pitiful to be indignant, his heart wrung with contending thoughts.
She held out her hands to him with another outcry of terror.
‘Don’t go! I have no one. Don’t forsake me, don’t leave me alone! John, John!’
‘I must,’ he said, ‘if I am to defend you, to save you, as you say. And then,’ he added, ‘there is more than that: to take care of—him. He cannot be ignored, mother; at least he has claims upon me.’
‘Oh, John! Stay with me, don’t go. It has not been for myself I have feared most, but for you. It was always for you that I have feared, lest he might get an influence, lest he might—— John, stay with me! Have I not the best right to you? I that have——’
‘Distrusted me always, mother. I don’t blame you, but you know it has been so.’
She covered her face with her hands.
‘I am but a feeble, prejudiced woman. I claim no exception. I do wrong trying to do right, like all the rest, John. I feared, God forgive me, that you might turn out—I thought you were——’
‘The son of my father,’ he said, with a mingling of sweetness and bitterness which gave something keen and poignant to the sound of his voice. ‘And so I am—and so I must prove myself now.’