THE STEADFAST HEART
to get this thing straightened out. I’m a meddlesome old woman, and I glory in it. I’m an old woman, and that means a great deal, young man…. Lydia says you won’t take her back.” She flicked the last sentence at Angus with disconcerting suddenness.
Angus shook his head. “No,” he said dully. “I can’t take her back.”
“Why?”
After a moment’s hesitation Angus replied. “You know why Lydia went away. It was because my family was—not— It was because my father, just released from prison, came to me—to die. I wouldn’t, couldn’t turn him out…. If she had come back in a month, two months, I—it would have been all right. But she didn’t come. She waited for my father to die. She waited until she heard who my mother was. That’s why she came back. It wasn’t for me…. It was only because I am Henry G. Woodhouse’s grandson…. So, you see, I couldn’t take her back.”
“Henry G. Woodhouse’s grandson!” Great-aunt Margaret’s expression was one of such genuine astonishment as to be beyond questioning. “What are you talking about, young man?”
Angus regarded her gravely, questioningly. She did not appear to be a woman who would make a lying pretense of ignorance, or who would
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