talk as though Sir Timothy and I were an ordinary husband and wife,
entirely dependent on one another's love and sympathy. Don't you know
_he_ stands alone--above all the human follies and weaknesses of a
mere woman? Can't you guess," said Lady Mary, passionately, "that it's
my boy, my poor faulty, undutiful boy--oh, that I should call him
so!--who needs me? that it's his voice that would be calling in my
heart whilst I awaited Sir Timothy's pleasure to-morrow?"

"His _pleasure_?" said John, sternly.

"I am shocking you, and I didn't want to shock you," she cried, almost
wildly. "But you don't suppose he needs _me_--me myself? He only wants
to be sure I'm doing the right thing. He wants to give people no
chance of saying that Lady Mary Crewys rushed off to see her spoilt
boy whilst her husband hovered between life and death. A lay figure
would do just as well; if it would only sit in an armchair and hold
its handkerchief to its eyes; and if the neighbours, and his sisters,
and the servants could be persuaded to think it was I."

"Hush, hush!" said John.

"Do let me speak out; pray let me speak out," she said, breathless and
imploring, "and you can think what you like of me afterwards, when I
am gone, if only you won't scold now. I am so sick of being scolded,"
said Lady Mary. "Am I to be a child for ever--I, that am so old, and
have lost my boy?"

He thought there was something in her of the child that never grows
up; the guilelessness, the charm, the ready tears and smiles, the
quick changes of mood.