This struck Ellen as very strange.  She went on eating her ice pudding, but she cogitated on this matter.  Why had this second son been brought up away from his mother?  Surely that hardly ever happened except when there had been a divorce, and a husband whose wife had run away with another man was awarded by the courts “the custody of the child.”  Had she not talked of this son in the over-bluff tone in which people talk of those to whom they have done a wrong?  She was possessed of the fierce monogamous passion which accompanies first and unachieved love, that loathing of all who are not content with the single sacramental draught which is the blood of God, but go heating the body with unblessed fermented wines; and she glared sharply under her brows at this woman, who after losing Richard’s father married another man and then, as it appeared, had loved yet another man, as she might at someone whom she suspected of being drunk.  It was true that Richard adored her, but then no doubt this kind of woman knew well how to deceive men.  Softly she made to herself the Scottish manifestation of incredulity, “Mhm....”  And Marion, for thirty years vigilant for sounds of scorn, heard and perfectly understood.

She remained, however, massively and unattractively immobile.  There came to her neither word nor expression to remove the girl’s dubiety.  Since she had heard such sounds of scorn over so lengthy a period they no longer came to her as trumpet calls to action, but rather as imperatives to silence, for above all things she desired that evil things should come to an end, and she had learned that an ugly speech ricochetting from the hard wall of a just answer may fly further and do worse.  She knew it was necessary that she should dispel Ellen’s suspicion, because they must work together to make a serene home for Richard, and she desired to do so for her son’s sake, because she herself was possessed by the far fiercer monogamous passion of achieved and final love, which is disillusioned concerning mystical draughts, but knows that to take the bread of the beloved and cast it to the dogs is sin.  She had acquired that knowledge, which is the only valuable kind of chastity worth having, that night when she had been forced to commit that profanation.  Shading her eyes while there rushed over her the recollection of a pallid face looking yellow as it bent over the lamp, she reflected that even if she conquered this life-long indisposition to reply, the story was too monstrous to be told.  It would not be believed.  This girl would look at her under her brows and make that Scotch noise again and think her a liar as well as loose.  So she sat silent, letting Ellen dislike her.

She said at length, “Let’s go and have coffee in the lounge.”

“I’m sure we don’t need it,” murmured Ellen, as a tribute to the magnificence of the meal.

Crossing the room was a terrible business.  She hoped people were not staring at her because she was with a woman whom they could perhaps see had once been bad.  No doubt there were signs by which experienced people could tell.  Richard’s presence seemed all at once to have set behind the rim of the earth.