All the time it knelt at her knee saying its prayers she was wondering whether, when he was a little older, he would not get caught by the tide out on the flats.  “You vile woman!” she exclaimed in amazement.  “You murderess!” But that was merely conversation which did not alter the established fact that her profounder self still hated the child it had brought forth, as it had done before he was born, and now, as then, was plotting to kill it, and that some check which her consciousness had always exerted on that hatred had for some reason been damaged, and that he was in active danger from her.

All night she lay awake, and in the morning she went up to the bailiff’s office at Torque Hall and asked them to send for Harry.  She waited in an inner room, her heart quite calm with misery, and when Harry appeared in the doorway she did not care one way or another that he was white and shaken.  Without delaying to greet him, she told him that she loathed Peacey’s child so much that it must be taken away from her, at least for some time, and that she had wondered if she ought to give him a chance of finding affection with his father, who had, after all, never stopped sending him presents.

There was a silence, and she turned her eyes on him and found him looking disapproving.  Plainly he thought it very unnatural of her to dislike her own child, and was daring to doubt if his own son was safe with her.  He—­he of all men—­who by his disloyalty had brought on her this monstrous birth that had deformed her fate!  She clenched her fists and drew in a sharp breath and her eyes blazed.  He moved forward suddenly in his chair, and she saw that this display of her quality had drawn him to her, as always the moon of her being had drawn the fluid tides of his, and that he wanted to touch her.  Nearly he desired her.  That also was insolence.  Her acute hating glance recorded that whereas desire had used to make his face hard and splendid like a diamond, like a flashing sword, it now made it lax, and she realised with agony, though, of course, without surprise, that he had been unfaithful to their love times without number.  But she looked into his eyes and found them bereaved as her heart was.  She turned aside and sobbed once, drily.  After that, they spoke softly, as if one they had both loved lay dead somewhere close at hand.  He told her that Peacey had set up for himself in an inn, and that a widowed sister of his, named Susan Rodney, who also had been in the Torques’ service, was keeping house for him.  She was a really good sort, he declared, although she was Peacey’s sister, and very motherly; indeed, she had been terribly upset by the loss of her only child, a little boy of nine, so she would doubtless welcome the charge of Roger.  At any rate, there would be no harm in letting the child go to her for a three months’ visit.

“I’ll settle the whole thing,” he said.  “You’d better not write; he may want to meet you.”