"Then where is he? With you?"
"Yes, with me. I have come to know your mind. He cannot always remain with me and at variance with his father."
"On my account this has happened?" she said.
"Yes, on your account. How is this to end?"
She put her hands to her brow, and pressed her temples. "I am pulled this way and that," she answered, "and I feel as if I should go mad. But I have made my resolve, I will give him up. I have been an undutiful daughter always, and now I will obey my mother's last wishes. In that one thing that will cost me most, I will submit, and so atone for the wrong I did all the years before."
"Then you determine to give up Anthony, wholly?"
The colour came and went in her cheek, then deserted it entirely. She clasped her hands over her knee—she had reseated herself—and she said in a low voice, "Wholly."
"You give me authority to tell him this?"
"Yes. It can never be that we can belong to each other after what my mother said. You heard. She hoped if he ever passed through this door, that he might be struck dead on the hearth."
"They were awful words," said Luke, "but——"