'If you wish it, Roger, we will return to London. I shall find it hard to explain to Hetta;--but we will go.'
'No; I certainly do not wish that.'
'But you have said such hard things! How are we to stay? You speak of Felix as though he were all bad.' She looked at him hoping to get from him some contradiction of this, some retractation, some kindly word; but it was what he did think, and he had nothing to say. She could bear much. She was not delicate as to censure implied, or even expressed. She had endured rough usage before, and was prepared to endure more. Had he found fault with herself, or with Henrietta, she would have put up with it, for the sake of benefits to come,--would have forgiven it the more easily because perhaps it might not have been deserved. But for her son she was prepared to fight. If she did not defend him, who would? 'I am grieved, Roger, that we should have troubled you with our visit, but I think that we had better go. You are very harsh, and it crushes me.'
'I have not meant to be harsh.'
'You say that Felix is seeking for his--prey, and that he is to be brought here to be near--his prey. What can be more harsh than that? At any rate, you should remember that I am his mother.'
She expressed her sense of injury very well. Roger began to be ashamed of himself, and to think that he had spoken unkind words. And yet he did not know how to recall them. 'If I have hurt you, I regret it much.'
'Of course you have hurt me. I think I will go in now. How very hard the world is! I came here thinking to find peace and sunshine, and there has come a storm at once.'
'You asked me about the Melmottes, and I was obliged to speak. You cannot think that I meant to offend you.' They walked on in silence till they had reached the door leading from the garden into the house, and here he stopped her. 'If I have been over hot with you, let me beg your pardon,' She smiled and bowed; but her smile was not one of forgiveness; and then she essayed to pass on into the house. 'Pray do not speak of going, Lady Carbury.'
'I think I will go to my room now. My head aches so that I can hardly stand.'
It was late in the afternoon,--about six,--and according to his daily custom he should have gone round to the offices to see his men as they came from their work, but he stood still for a few moments on the spot where Lady Carbury had left him and went slowly across the lawn to the bridge and there seated himself on the parapet. Could it really be that she meant to leave his house in anger and to take her daughter with her? Was it thus that he was to part with the one human being in the world that he loved? He was a man who thought much of the duties of hospitality, feeling that a man in his own house was bound to exercise a courtesy towards his guests sweeter, softer, more gracious than the world required elsewhere. And of all guests those of his own name were the best entitled to such courtesy at Carbury. He held the place in trust for the use of others. But if there were one among all others to whom the house should be a house of refuge from care, not an abode of trouble, on whose behalf, were it possible, he would make the very air softer, and the flowers sweeter than their wont, to whom he would declare, were such words possible to his tongue, that of him and of his house, and of all things there, she was the mistress, whether she would condescend to love him or no,--that one was his cousin Hetta. And now he had been told by his guest that he had been so rough to her that she and her daughter must return to London!