"It will be impossible to keep it from her."
"Poor child!" murmured Ferrier--"poor child!"
Then he looked at Lady Lucy.
"May I take Oliver into the inner room a little while?" he asked,
pointing to a farther drawing-room.
"By all means. I shall be here when you return."
Sir James had a few hurried words in private with Marsham, and then took
his leave. As he and Lady Lucy shook hands, he gave her a
penetrating look.
"Try and think of the girl!" he said, in a low voice; "_the girl_--in
her first youth."
"I think of my son," was the unmoved reply. "Good-bye, Sir James. I feel
that we are adversaries, and I wish it were not so."
Sir James walked away, possessed by a savage desire to do some damage to
the cathedral in pith, as he passed it on his way to the door; or to
shake his fist in the faces of Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury, whose
portraits adorned the staircase. The type of Catholic woman which he
most admired rose in his mind; compassionate, tender, infinitely soft
and loving--like the saints; save where "the faith" was concerned--like
the saints, again. This Protestant rigidity and self-sufficiency were
the deuce!
But he would go down to Beechcote, and he and Oliver between them would
see that child through.
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