our children that we are able to achieve disinterested
love, real love. But that left unexplained that far more intimate
emotional hold of Hugh than of his very jolly little step-brothers. That
was a fact into which Mr. Britling rather sedulously wouldn't look....

Mr. Britling was probably much franker and more open-eyed with himself
and the universe than a great number of intelligent people, and yet
there were quite a number of aspects of his relations with his wife,
with people about him, with his country and God and the nature of
things, upon which he turned his back with an attentive persistence. But
a back too resolutely turned may be as indicative as a pointing finger,
and in this retrogressive way, and tacitly even so far as his formal
thoughts, his unspoken comments, went, Mr. Britling knew that he loved
his son because he had lavished the most hope and the most imagination
upon him, because he was the one living continuation of that dear life
with Mary, so lovingly stormy at the time, so fine now in memory, that
had really possessed the whole heart of Mr. Britling. The boy had been
the joy and marvel of the young parents; it was incredible to them that
there had ever been a creature so delicate and sweet, and they brought
considerable imagination and humour to the detailed study of his minute
personality and to the forecasting of his future. Mr. Britling's mind
blossomed with wonderful schemes for his education. All that mental
growth no doubt contributed greatly to Mr. Britling's peculiar
affection, and with it there interwove still tenderer and subtler
elements, for the boy had a score of Mary's traits. But there were other
things still more conspicuously ignored. One silent factor in the slow
widening of the breach between Edith and Mr. Britling was her cool
estimate of her stepson. She was steadfastly kind to this shock-headed,
untidy little dreamer, he was extremely well cared for in her hands, she
liked him and she was amused by him--it is difficult to imagine what
more Mr. Britling could have expected--but it was as plain as daylight
that she felt that this was not the child she would have cared to have
borne. It was quite preposterous and perfectly natural that this should
seem to Mr. Britling to be unfair to Hugh.

Edith's home was more prosperous than Mary's; she brought her own money
to it; the bringing up of her children was a far more efficient business
than Mary's instinctive proceedings. Hugh h