There was no reply.

“You were wise not to stay for the sermon.”  Mrs. Conyers’ voice trembled with anger as she passed on and on, seeking a penetrable point for conversation.  “I do not believe in using the church to teach young men that they should blame their fathers for their own misdeeds.  If I have done any good in this world, I do not expect my father and mother to be rewarded for it in the next; if I have done wrong, I do not expect my children to be punished.  I shall claim the reward and I shall stand the punishment, and that is the end of it.  Teaching young men to blame their parents because they are prodigals is nonsense, and injurious nonsense.  I hope you do not imagine,” she said, with a stroke of characteristic coarseness, “that you get any of your faults from me.”

“I have never held you responsible, grandmother.”

Mrs. Conyers could wait no longer.

“Isabel,” she asked sharply, “why did you not see Rowan when he called a few minutes ago?”

“Grandmother, you know that I do not answer such questions.”

How often in years gone by such had been Isabel’s answer!  The grandmother awaited it now.  To her surprise Isabel after some moments of hesitation replied without resentment: 

“I did not wish to see him.”

There was a momentary pause; then this unexpected weakness was met with a blow.

“You were eager enough to see him last night.”

“I can only hope,” murmured Isabel aloud though wholly to herself, “that I did not make this plain to him.”

“But what has happened since?”

Nothing was said for a while.  The two women had been unable to see each other clearly.  A moment later Isabel crossed the room quickly and taking the chair in front of her grandmother, searched that treacherous face imploringly for something better in it than she had ever seen there.  Could she trust the untrustworthy?  Would falseness itself for once be true?

“Grandmother,” she said, and her voice betrayed how she shrank from her own words, “before you sent for me I was about to come down.  I wished to speak with you about a very delicate matter, a very serious matter.  You have often reproached me for not taking you into my confidence.  I am going to give you my confidence now.”

At any other moment the distrust and indignity contained in the tone of this avowal would not have escaped Mrs. Conyers.  But surprise riveted her attention.  Isabel gave her no time further: 

“A thing has occurred in regard to which we must act together for our own sakes—­on account of the servants in the house—­on account of our friends, so that there may be no gossip, no scandal.”

Nothing at times so startles us as our own words.  As the girl uttered the word “scandal,” she rose frightened as though it faced her and began to walk excitedly backward and forward.  Scandal had never touched her life.  She had never talked scandal; had never thought scandal.  Dwelling under the same roof with it as the master passion of a life and forced to encounter it in so many repulsive ways, she had needed little virtue to regard it with abhorrence.