That hit her like a blow in the face. Always battering at the gates of her mind, to which she had never given it entrance, was the thought that Viola was surprisingly different from herself, surprisingly unlike what she would have expected her mother's daughter to be, though in feature she resembled her.
Still it was true that Lady Brent had not seen her, and could not know. "Her mother was an actress, no better than I was," she said, "--not so good in many ways. Her father is a scene-painter in a theatre, and drinks too. My father was a good man, though he may not have been what you'd call a gentleman. That's what all your wonderful bringing up of Harry has led to. If he'd been brought up more naturally, and not everything and everybody sacrificed to keep him shut up down here, it's very unlikely that this would have happened."
"You think that, do you, in your loving wisdom? You had the boy always before you, and saw what he was growing into. So did I, and I trusted him. You couldn't."
"I don't mind your sneers. At any rate, on the first opportunity he does what any other boy might do. He meets a girl and falls in love with her, and keeps it from us all the time he's meeting her, and afterwards."
"Keeps it from all of us, I said. Did you know any more than I did that he had met this girl down here?"
She could only sit and stare, with her mouth a little open. Whatever she may have thought of, it had never been this.
Lady Brent did not treat her disclosure as a triumph to be dwelt upon. "How could I help knowing?" she went on. "I loved Harry. Nothing could have happened in his life to alter it that I shouldn't have noticed. When I saw that something had happened I waited until it came to me what it was."
"You knew, and you let it go on!" The revelation had taken all the sting out of her. She was more interested than offended.
"Didn't I tell you that I trusted Harry? I knew what he was, if you didn't. I should have known if he had taken a wrong turning in life, and then I should have tried to influence him. When I did know what had happened I knew well enough that he hadn't taken a wrong turning, by the way he bore himself. You couldn't see that. You can't even see it now."