Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/237

 the parentage of Theodore Wing were brought home.

Her bulwark with the public would be the loyalty of her husband and sons, and if it smacked of selfishness and unfeeling to rely on them and not give a fair portion of thought to the suffering which would be hidden by their calm exterior, it must be remembered that during the entire period of her wife- and mother-hood she had lived with this thing, which had grown dimmer and dimmer as the years receded, until it had come to have for her, and it seemed to her necessarily for these others, a different aspect than it would have borne in the days before she had given to husband and children the pledge of her long devotion.

Before these years she would have reasoned of her husband's attitude toward such a tale from the sense of outrage, not tempered by long possession and intimate association. No, she had no fear there, save of the inward sense of humiliation under which she had gone to her son's office, and for fighting which she now faced her own reflection, as representative of the world of public opinion.