Chapter 5 - Page 2

her. She, too, could produce avarice,
brutality, stupidity--and, what was worse, vulgarity. It was
on her soil and through her influence that a silly woman had
married a cad. He hated Gino, the betrayer of his life's
ideal, and now that the sordid tragedy had come, it filled
him with pangs, not of sympathy, but of final disillusion.

The disillusion was convenient for Mrs. Herriton, who
saw a trying little period ahead of her, and was glad to
have her family united.

"Are we to go into mourning, do you think?" She always
asked her children's advice where possible.

Harriet thought that they should. She had been
detestable to Lilia while she lived, but she always felt
that the dead deserve attention and sympathy. "After all
she has suffered. That letter kept me awake for nights.
The whole thing is like one of those horrible modern plays
where no one is in 'the right.' But if we have mourning, it
will mean telling Irma."

"Of course we must tell Irma!" said Philip.

"Of course," said his mother. "But I think we can still
not tell her about Lilia's marriage."

"I don't think that. And she must have suspected
something by now."

"So one would have supposed. But she never cared for
her mother, and little girls of nine don't reason clearly.
She looks on it as a long visit. And it is important, most
important, that she should not receive a shock. All a
child's life depends on the ideal it has of its parents.
Destroy that and everything goes--morals, behaviour,
everything. Absolute trust in some one else is the essence
of education. That is why I have been so careful about
talking of poor Lilia before her."

"But you forget this wretched baby. Waters and Adamson
write that there is a baby."

"Mrs. Theobald must be told. But she doesn't count.
She is breaking up very quickly. She doesn't even see Mr.
Kingcroft now. He, thank goodness, I hear, has at last
consoled himself with someone else."

"The child must know some time," persisted Philip, who
felt a little displeased, though he could not tell with what.

"The later the better. Every moment she is developing."

"I must say it seems rather hard luck, doesn't it?"

"On Irma? Why?"

"On us, perhaps. We have morals and behaviour also, and
I don't think this continual secrecy improves them."

"There's no need to twist the thing round to that," said
Harriet, rather disturbed.

"Of course there isn't," said her mother. "Let's keep
to the main issue. This baby's quite beside the point.
Mrs. Theobald will do nothing, and it's no concern of ours."

"It will make a difference in the money, surely," said he.

"No, dear; very little. Poor