“Oh, you may have been right. I hope you’ve not been wrong.”

“Mother!”

“She deserved the severest things you could say; and yet—”

“Well?”

“Perhaps she was punished enough already.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t like your being-vindictive.”

“Vindictive?”

“Being so terribly just, then.” She added, at his blank stare, “This is killing, Philip.”

He gave a bitter laugh. “I don’t think it will kill her. She isn’t that kind.”