"You don't understand, Dick. Everything is changed. It is now Lady Woodroffe who would spare him nothing. It is his mother who would save him from everything."
Dick looked at the pale woman lying on the sofa. Then he understood, and a tear stood in his eye. 'Twas a tender heart. He went over to the sofa and kissed her forehead.
"Forgive me," he said.
"Oh, Dick!" she murmured. "Would to God you were my son! As for him, he is what they have made him."
They had made him grumpy and obstinate. At that moment the doctor was urging upon him compliance with a simple thing.
"You want me to go to the rooms of the gardener man who insulted me? I am to listen to some rubbish about his wife. What do I care about his wife? I tell you, Sir Robert, this is trifling. I won't go, there; tell them so. I won't go."
"Then, Sir Humphrey, I tell you plainly, Ruin stares you in the face. Yes; the loss of everything in this world that you value—everything. You will lose all. I cannot explain what this means. But you will have letters to-morrow which will change your whole life—and all your thoughts. They mean, I say, the loss of everything that you value."
"I don't believe a word——"
"You wanted to know what Mr. Haveril meant, what your mother meant, what Miss Molly Pennefather meant. They meant Ruin—Ruin, and loss of everything, Sir Humphrey—that and nothing else."