"It is awful," said Mrs. Hilary. "Awful.... It must be stopped. I shall go to Rome. At once."
"That won't stop it, dear, if it is going on. It will only irritate the young people."
"Irritate! You can use a word like that! Mother, you don't realise this ghastly thing."
"I quite see, my dear, that Nan may be carrying on with this artist. And very wrong it is, if so. All I say is that your going to Rome won't stop it. You know that you and Nan don't always get on very smoothly. You rub each other up.... It would be far better if someone else went. Neville, say."
"Neville is ill." Mrs. Hilary shut her lips tightly on that. She was glad Neville was ill; she had always hated (she could not help it) the devotion between Neville and Nan. Nan, in her tempestuous childhood, flaring with rage against her mother, or sullen, spiteful and perverse, long before she could have put into words the qualities in Mrs. Hilary which made her like that, had always gone to Neville, nine years older, to be soothed and restored to good temper. Neville had reprimanded the little naughty sister, had told her she must be "decent to mother—feel decent if you can, behave decent in any case," was the way she had put it. It was Neville who had heard Nan's confidences and helped her out of scrapes in childhood, schoolgirlhood and ever since. This was very bitter to Mrs. Hilary. She was jealous of both of them; jealous that so much of Neville's love should go elsewhere than to her, jealous that Nan, who gave her nothing except generous and extravagant gifts and occasional, spasmodic, remorseful efforts at affection and gentleness, should to Neville give all.
"Neville is ill," she said. "She certainly won't be fit to travel out of England this winter. Influenza coming on the top of that miserable breakdown is a thing to be treated with the greatest care. Even when she is recovered, post-influenza will keep her weak till the summer. I am really anxious about her. No; Neville is quite out of the question."
"Well, what about Pamela?"
"Pamela is up to her eyes in her work.... Besides, why should Pamela go, or Neville, rather than I? A girl's mother is obviously the right person. I may not be of much use to my children in these days, but at least I hope I can save them from themselves."
"It takes a clever parent to do that, Emily," said Grandmama, who doubtless knew.
"But, mother, what would you have me do? Sit with my hands before me while my daughter lives in sin? What's your plan?"