"Your son will be crushed, beaten down, humiliated to the lowest, by this revelation. Ask yourself how he will reward the people who have caused the discovery. Will he reward the hand which inflicts this lifelong shame—it can be nothing less to him—with affection and gratitude—or——? Finish the question for yourself."
Alice clasped her hands. Then she rose and bowed her head. "Lord, have mercy upon me, miserable sinner!" she murmured.
Molly laid her arm round her waist.
"Take me to my room," she murmured.
Her room opened out of the sitting-room. Through the open door Sir Robert saw her lying rather than kneeling at the bedside, her arms thrown upon the counterpane. Molly stood over her, the tears streaming down her cheeks.
The doctor beckoned the girl to leave her. "My dear"—his own eyes were dim with an unaccustomed blurr; he could walk without emotion through a hundred wards filled with suffering bodies, but he had never walked the ward of suffering souls—"my dear, leave her for a while. We are all miserable sinners, you and Dick, with your revengeful thoughts, and I, and everybody. And the greatest sinner is the young man himself."
"I did not think," Molly sobbed. "I only thought—we only wanted to prove the case."
"It is the old, old parable. The false mother thinks only of herself; the true mother thinks of her son. Solomon, I thank thee!"
The true mother came back. "Doctor, do what you will—what you can—I will spare him. Let things remain exactly as they are."