She thought so, too, apparently, for she found no words in which to tell him that it was his affair. Her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her eyes downcast, she seemed shrunken together, overcome by his tactless intrusion.
The supplication brought her the resource of words again. "Of course, dear. It is only--I can't explain it to you. It is very complicated. But, though it seems so strange to you,--to everybody, I know--it is just that: though we don't live together, and though I see so little of your father, I do care for him very, very much. More than for anybody in the world,--except you, of course, dear Augustine."
"Oh, don't be polite to me," he said, and smiled. "More than for anybody in the world; stick to it."
She could but accept the amendment, so kindly and, apparently, so lightly pressed upon her, and she answered him with a faint, a grateful smile, saying, in a low voice:--"You see, dear, he is the noblest person I have ever known." Tears were in her eyes. Augustine turned away his own.
They sat then for a little while in silence, the mother and son.
Her eyes downcast, her hands folded in an attitude that suggested some inner dedication, Amabel Channice seemed to stay her thoughts on the vision of that nobility. And though her son was near her, the thoughts were far from him.
It was characteristic of Augustine Channice, when he mused, to gaze straight before him, whatever the object might be that met his unseeing eyes. The object now was the high Autumnal sky outside, crossed only here and there by a drifting fleet of clouds.
The light fell calmly upon the mother and son and, in their stillness, their contemplation, the two faces were like those on an old canvas, preserved from time and change in the trance-like immutability of art. In colour, the two heads chimed, though Augustine's hair was vehemently gold and there were under-tones of brown and amber in his skin. But the oval of Lady Channice's face grew angular in her son's, broader and more defiant; so that, palely, darkly white and gold, on their deep background, the two heads emphasized each other's character by contrast. Augustine's lips were square and scornful; his nose ruggedly bridged; his eyes, under broad eyebrows, ringed round the iris with a line of vivid hazel; and as his lips, though mild in expression, were scornful in form, so these eyes, even in their contemplation, seemed fierce. Calm, controlled face as it was, its meaning for the spectator was of something passionate and implacable. In mother and son alike one felt a capacity for endurance almost tragic; but while Augustine's would be the endurance of the rock, to be moved only by shattering, his mother's was the endurance of the flower, that bends before the tempest, unresisting, beaten down into the earth, but lying, even there, unbroken.