isn't it, who is in love with her, or says he is?
Highly connected, too, I suppose."

For a moment a hideous sense of humiliation came over the woman.
Her head drooped. She wiped her eyes with shaking hands.
"Sibyl has a mother," she murmured; "I had none."

The lad was touched. He went towards her, and stooping down,
he kissed her. "I am sorry if I have pained you by asking about
my father," he said, "but I could not help it. I must go now.
Good-bye. Don't forget that you will have only one child now
to look after, and believe me that if this man wrongs my sister,
I will find out who he is, track him down, and kill him like a dog.
I swear it."

The exaggerated folly of the threat, the passionate gesture
that accompanied it, the mad melodramatic words, made life seem
more vivid to her. She was familiar with the atmosphere.
She breathed more freely, and for the first time for many months
she really admired her son. She would have liked to have continued
the scene on the same emotional scale, but he cut her short.
Trunks had to be carried down and mufflers looked for.
The lodging-house drudge bustled in and out. There was the bargaining
with the cabman. The moment was lost in vulgar details.
It was with a renewed feeling of disappointment that she waved the
tattered lace handkerchief from the window, as her son drove away.
She was conscious that a great opportunity had been wasted.
She consoled herself by telling Sibyl how desolate she felt her
life would be, now that she had only one child to look after.
She remembered the phrase. It had pleased her. Of the threat