He fumed at a situation intolerable and was finally moved to accept Estelle’s advice.  From no considerations for Bridport, or Bridetown, did she urge his active intervention.  For Abel’s sake she begged it and was more insistent than before, when she heard of Sabina’s indifference.

“He’s yours,” she said.  “You’ve been so splendidly patient.  So do go on being patient, and the result will be a fine character and a reward for you.  It isn’t what people would say; but if he goes to a reformatory, far from wanting you and your help when he comes out again, he’ll know in the future that you might have saved him from it and given him a first-rate education among good, upright boys.  But if he went to a reformatory, he must meet all sorts of difficult boys, like himself, and they wouldn’t help him, and he’d come out harder than he went in.”

His heart yielded to her at last, even though his head still doubted, for Raymond’s attitude to Estelle had begun insensibly to change since his accident in the cricket field.  From that time he won a glimpse of things that apparently others already knew.  Sabina, in their recorded conversation, had bluntly told him that Estelle loved him; and while the man dismissed the idea as an absurdity, it was certain that from this period he began to grow somewhat more sentimentally interested in her.  The interest developed very slowly, but this business of Abel brought them closer together, for she haunted him during the days before the child came to his trial, and when, perhaps for her sake as much as any other reason, Raymond decided to undertake his son’s defence, her gratitude was great.

He made it clear to her that she was responsible for his determination.

“I’ve let you over-rule me, Estelle,” he told her.  “Don’t forget it, Chicky.  And now that the boy will, I hope, be in my hands, you must strengthen my hands all you can and help me to make him my friend.”

She promised thankfully.

“Be sure I shall never, never forget,” she said, “and I shall never be happy till he knows what you really are, and what you wish him.  You must win him now.  It’s surely contrary to all natural instinct if you can’t.  The mere fact that you can forgive him for what he tried to do, ought to soften his heart.”

“I trust more to you than myself,” he answered.

CHAPTER X

THE ADVERTISEMENT

Raymond Ironsyde had his way, and local justices, familiar with the situation, were content not to commit Abel, but leave the boy in his father’s hands.  He took all responsibility and, when the time came, sent his son to a good boarding-school at Yeovil.  Sabina so far met him that the operation was conducted in her name, and since the case of Abel had been kept out of local papers, his fellow scholars knew nothing of his errors.  But his difficulties of character were explained to those now set over him, and they were warned that his moral education, while attempted, had not so far been successful.