Pendyce could only answer with a smile.
Mr. Paramor put the roses to his nose.
"Not so good as yours," he said, "are they? but the best I can do."
Mrs. Pendyce blushed with pleasure.
"My garden is looking so beautiful----" Then, remembering that she no
longer had a garden, she stopped; but remembering also that, though she
had lost her garden, Mr. Paramor still had his, she added quickly: "And
yours, Mr. Paramor--I'm sure it must be looking lovely."
Mr. Paramor drew out a kind of dagger with which he had stabbed some
papers to his desk, and took a letter from the bundle.
"Yes," he said, "it's looking very nice. You'd like to see this, I
expect."
"Bellew v. Bellew and Pendyce" was written at the top. Mrs. Pendyce
stared at those words as though fascinated by their beauty; it was long
before she got beyond them. For the first time the full horror of these
matters pierced the kindly armour that lies between mortals and what
they do not like to think of. Two men and a woman wrangling, fighting,
tearing each other before the eyes of all the world. A woman and two men
stripped of charity and gentleness, of moderation and sympathy-stripped
of all that made life decent and lovable, squabbling like savages before
the eyes of all the world. Two men, and one of them her son, and
between them a woman whom both of them had loved! "Bellew v.
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