Pendyce raised herself, and for many seconds stared at her husband.
Her heart beat furiously. It had come! What she had been expecting all
these days had come! Her pale lips answered:
"What do you mean? I don't understand you, Horace."
Mr. Pendyce's eyes searched here and therefor what, he did not know.
"This has decided me," he said. "I'll have no half-measures. Until he
can show me he's done with that woman, until he can prove he's given up
this betting, until--until the heaven's fallen, I'll have no more to do
with him!"
To Margery Pendyce, with all her senses quivering, that saying, "Until
the heaven's fallen," was frightening beyond the rest. On the lips
of her husband, those lips which had never spoken in metaphors, never
swerved from the direct and commonplace, nor deserted the shibboleth of
his order, such words had an evil and malignant sound.
He went on:
"I've brought him up as I was brought up myself. I never thought to have
had a scamp for my son!"
Mrs. Pendyce's heart stopped fluttering.
"How dare you, Horace!" she cried.
The Squire, letting go the bed-rail, paced to and fro. There was
something savage in the sound of his footsteps through the utter
silence.
"I've made up my mind," he said. "The estate----"
There broke from Mrs. Pendyce a torrent of words:
"You talk of the way you brought George up! You--you never understood
him! You--you never did anything for him! He just grew up like you all
grow up in this-----" But no word followed, for she did not know herself
what was that against which her soul had blindly fluttered its wings.
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