She shook her head, despairingly unconvinced. A word of anger, a note of passion, would have drawn from him passionate entreaties. Her self-contained and hopeless calm threw him back, as it were, upon himself.
“Well. Perhaps you had better tell me now. Not here. It is cold.”
She shivered, glanced at the window, and for the first time noticed that it was open.
“My poor child!”
He lowered the sash quickly, and caught up a brown shawl that lay over the back of a couch, and held it ready to slip round her shoulders. But she refused it, saying that she would be warm downstairs.
“I have carried you in it before now, Renie,” he said. “The first time—after the boy was born.”
“That was long ago—in a different state of existence. Oh, Hugh, how could you live a lie like this?”
“Come and I will tell you,” he said.
They went downstairs to the library. Jane met them with enquiries as to the lunch that had been awaiting Hugh’s return. Their eyes questioned one another.
“You can clear it away, Jane,” he said.