Philip started and shuddered.  He saw that his mother was not sincere.  Her insincerity to others had amused him, but it was disheartening when used against himself.

“Let us admit frankly,” she continued, “that after all we may have responsibilities.”

“I don’t understand you, Mother.  You are turning absolutely round.  What are you up to?”

In one moment an impenetrable barrier had been erected between them.  They were no longer in smiling confidence.  Mrs. Herriton was off on tactics of her own—­tactics which might be beyond or beneath him.

His remark offended her.  “Up to?  I am wondering whether I ought not to adopt the child.  Is that sufficiently plain?”

“And this is the result of half-a-dozen idiocies of Miss Abbott?”

“It is.  I repeat, she has been extremely impertinent.  None the less she is showing me my duty.  If I can rescue poor Lilia’s baby from that horrible man, who will bring it up either as Papist or infidel—­who will certainly bring it up to be vicious—­I shall do it.”

“You talk like Harriet.”

“And why not?” said she, flushing at what she knew to be an insult.  “Say, if you choose, that I talk like Irma.  That child has seen the thing more clearly than any of us.  She longs for her little brother.  She shall have him.  I don’t care if I am impulsive.”

He was sure that she was not impulsive, but did not dare to say so.  Her ability frightened him.  All his life he had been her puppet.  She let him worship Italy, and reform Sawston—­just as she had let Harriet be Low Church.  She had let him talk as much as he liked.  But when she wanted a thing she always got it.

And though she was frightening him, she did not inspire him with reverence.  Her life, he saw, was without meaning.  To what purpose was her diplomacy, her insincerity, her continued repression of vigour?  Did they make any one better or happier?  Did they even bring happiness to herself?  Harriet with her gloomy peevish creed, Lilia with her clutches after pleasure, were after all more divine than this well-ordered, active, useless machine.

Now that his mother had wounded his vanity he could criticize her thus.  But he could not rebel.  To the end of his days he could probably go on doing what she wanted.  He watched with a cold interest the duel between her and Miss Abbott.  Mrs. Herriton’s policy only appeared gradually.  It was to prevent Miss Abbott interfering with the child at all costs, and if possible to prevent her at a small cost.  Pride was the only solid element in her disposition.  She could not bear to seem less charitable than others.

“I am planning what can be done,” she would tell people, “and that kind Caroline Abbott is helping me.  It is no business of either of us, but we are getting to feel that the baby must not be left entirely to that horrible man.  It would be unfair to little Irma; after all, he is her half-brother.  No, we have come to nothing definite.”