“Yes, aren’t they? She doesn’t seem at all afraid.”
“I don’t think she need be. She has such splendid health.”
“But she may suffer very much.”
“Yes, but something will carry her gloriously through all that, I expect.”
“And you think it’s very natural, very usual, her—her sort of living alone with the child before it is born?”
Mrs. Leith saw in her son’s eyes an unmistakably wistful look at this moment. It was very hard for her not to take him in her arms just then, not to say, “My son, d’you suppose I don’t understand it all—all?” But she never moved, her hands lay still in her lap, and she replied:
“Very natural, quite natural, Dion. Your Rosamund is just being herself.”
“You think she’s able to live with the child already?”
Mrs. Leith hesitated for a moment. In that moment certainly she felt a strong, even an almost terrible inclination to tell a lie to her son. But she answered:
“Yes, I do.”