“You should blame me all the same,” she said.  “It’s as much me in his blood as his grandmother at his ear, that turned him to hate you.  I don’t hate you now—­or anybody, or anything.  I’ve not got strength and fight in me now to hate, or love either.  But I did hate you and I was full of hate before he was born, and the milk was curdled with hate that fed him.  Now I don’t care what happens.  I can’t prevent the future of my child from shaping itself.  The time for preventing things and doing things and fixing character and getting self-respect is over and past.  What he’s done is the natural result of what was done to him.  And who’ll blame him?  Who’ll blame me for being bad and indifferent—­wicked if you like?  Life’s made me so—­hard—­cold to others.  But I should have been different if I’d had love and common justice.  So would he.  It’s natural in him to hate you; and now the poor little wretch will get what he deserves—­same as his mother did before him, and so all’s said.  What we deserved, that’s all.”

“I don’t think so.  I’m very willing to fight for him if I can do him good by fighting.  The situation is unusual.  You probably do not realise what this means to me.  Is there to be no finality in your resentment?  Honestly I get rather tired of it.”

“I got rather tired of it twelve years ago.”

“You’re not prepared to help me, then, or make any suggestion—­for the child’s sake?”

“I’ll not help, or hinder.  I’ve been looking on so long now that I’m only fit to look on.  My child has everything against him, and he knows it; and you can’t save him from his fate any more than I can.  So what’s the good of wasting time talking as though you could?  Fate’s fate—­beyond us.”

“We make our own fate.  I may tell you that I should have been largely influenced by you, Sabina.  The question admits of different answers and I recognise my responsibility.  Some say that I must intervene now and some say that I should not.”

“And the only one not asked to give an opinion is Abel himself.  A child is never asked about his own hopes and fears.”

“We know what his hopes were—­to burn down the Mill.  So we may take it for the present he’s not the best judge of what’s good for him.”

“I’ve done my duty to him,” she said, “and that’s all I could do.  I’m very sorry for him, and what love I’ve got for him is the sort that’s akin to pity.  It’s contrary to reason that I should take any deep joy in him, or worship the ground he walks on, like other mothers do towards their children.  For he stands there before me for ever as the sign and mark of my own failure in life.  But I don’t think any less of him for trying to destroy the works.  I’d decided about him long ago.”

Raymond found nothing to the purpose in this illusive talk.  It argued curious impassivity in Sabina he thought, and he felt jarred to find the conventional attitude of mother to son was not acknowledged by her.  Estelle had showed far more feeling, had taken a much more active part in the troubles of Abel.  Estelle had spared no pains in arguing for the child and imploring Ironsyde to exhaust his credit on Abel’s behalf.