"I've made up my mind to share that shame at home. I never could ask her to run from it."
"Then for pity's sake, let that miserable man alone, wherever he is. Or, if you can get at him, beg him to stay away, and keep still till he dies. Good-night."
Mrs. Hilary rose from her own chair, and stooped over Matt, where he had sunk in his, and kissed his troubled forehead. He thought he had solved one part of his problem; but her words showed him that he had not rightly seen it in that light of love which had really hid it in dazzling illusions.
The difficulty had not yielded, at all, when he met his father with it; he thought it had only grown tougher and knottier; and he hardly knew how to present it. His mother had not only promised not to speak to his father of the affair, she had utterly refused to speak of it, and Matt instantly perceived that the fact he announced was somehow far more unexpected to his father than it had seemed to his mother.
But Hilary received it with a patience, a tenderness for his son, in all his amazement, that touched Matt more keenly than any other fashion of meeting it could have done. He asked if it were something that Matt had done, or had merely made up his mind some time to do; and when Matt said it was something he had done, his father was silent a moment. Then he said, "I shall have to take some action about it."
"How, action?"
"Why, you must see, my dear boy, that as soon as this thing becomes known—and you wish it to be known, of course—"
"Of course!"
"It will be impossible for me to continue holding my present relation to Northwick."
"Northwick?"