o. I had my suspicions last year one day in the
train; and here it is again. The young person is mad."

She still said nothing.

"Shall I go round at once and give it her well? I'd really enjoy it."

In a low, serious voice--such a voice as she had not used to him for
months--Mrs. Herriton said, "Caroline has been extremely impertinent.
Yet there may be something in what she says after all. Ought the child
to grow up in that place--and with that father?"

Philip started and shuddered. He saw that his mother was not sincere.
Her insincerity to others had amused him, but it was disheartening when
used against himself.

"Let us admit frankly," she continued, "that after all we may have
responsibilities."

"I don't understand you, Mother. You are turning absolutely round. What
are you up to?"

In one moment an impenetrable barrier had been erected between them.
They were no longer in smiling confidence. Mrs. Herriton was off on
tactics of her own--tactics which might be beyond or beneath him.

His remark offended her. "Up to? I am wondering whether I ought not to
adopt the child. Is that sufficiently plain?"

"And this is the result of half-a-dozen idiocies of Miss Abbott?"

"It is. I repeat, she has been extremely impertinent. None the less
she is showing me my duty. If I can rescue poor Lilia's baby from that
horrible man, who will bring it up either as Papist or infidel--who will
certainly bring it up to be vicious--I shall do it."

"You talk like Harriet."

"And why not?" said she, flushing at what she knew to be an insult.
"Say, if you choose, that I talk like Irma. That child has seen the
thing more clearly than any of us. She longs for her little brother. She
shall have him. I don't care if I am impulsive."

He was sure that she was not impulsive, but did not dare to say so. Her
ability frightened him. All his life he had been her puppet. She let him
worship Italy, and reform Sawston--just as she had let Harriet be Low
Church. She had let him talk as much as he liked. But when she wanted a
thing she always got it.

And though she was frightening him, she did not inspire him with
reverence. Her life, he saw, was without meaning. To what purpose was
her diplomacy, her insincerity, her continued repression of vigour? Did
they make any one better or happier? Did they even bring happiness to
herself? Harriet with her gloomy peevish creed, Lilia with her clutches
after pleasure, were after all more divine