Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/192

Rh “No, no: but when they pervert things so damnably”

“John!”

He dropped into his chair again, and pushed the hair from his forehead with a groan.

“Well, then—put it that they have as much right to their view as I have: I only want you to see what it is. Whenever I try to do anything at Westmore—to give a real start to the work that Bessy and I planned together—some pretext is found to stop it: to pack us off to the ends of the earth, to cry out against reducing her income, to encourage her in some new extravagance to which the work at the mills must be sacriﬁced!”

Mrs. Amherst, growing pale under this outbreak, assured herself by a nervous backward glance that their privacy was still uninvaded; then her eyes returned to her son’s face.

“John—are you sure you’re not sacriﬁcmg your wife to the mills?”

He grew pale in turn, and they looked at each other for a moment without speaking.

“You see it as they do, then?” he rejoined with a discouraged sigh.

“I see it as any old woman would, who had my eXperiences to look back to.”

“Mother!” he exclaimed.

She smiled composedly. “Do you think I mean [ 176 ]