Sophy felt that he was to a certain extent justified in his anger. She promised for Bellamy that he would say things directly to Cecil himself in future.
Then she went away to the nursery for solace, sick at heart, sick at brain, sick in spirit.
To her amazement she found Lady Wychcote there, seated in a chair before the fire with Bobby on her knee. He was babbling excitedly, and his grandmother was smiling at him with that appraising look in her eyes which Sophy so resented. The boy tried to snap his soft, curled fingers at his mother as soon as he caught sight of her, in his eagerness to have her come near.
"Muvvah!" he cried. "Oh, _Muvvah_! Ganny div Bobby gee-gee!"
"Yes. I'm going to give him a Shelty," said Lady Wychcote. "It's high time the boy learned how to ride."
"It's very good of you," said Sophy, pleased for the child's delight. "But he's only two, you know."
"Quite old enough," Lady Wychcote said firmly. "I wonder you never thought of it yourself."
"We couldn't have afforded it in town," Sophy said with some stiffness. Her mother-in-law's tone was supercilious.
"Pf!" said Lady Wychcote. "You know Gerald has a _faible_ for you. You'd only to hint it."
"I don't hint for things," she said still more stiffly.
"Well, well! Don't let's tiff over it," Lady Wychcote retorted loftily. "We're not congenial, but I've taken a fancy to my grandson. Let that mollify you."
Sophy gazed out at the bleared landscape, that looked wavy like a bad print thus seen through the streaming window-pane. She realised in that moment that unhappiness filled her to the least crevice of her being. She needed kindness so bitterly, and here as her only companion was this frigid, acrid woman who disliked her for having married Cecil, and grudged her Gerald's friendship. Then she glanced back at the familiar group before the fire. Bobby was leaning forward against the beautifully corseted figure of his grandparent, eagerly demanding to know more about his "gee-gee."
A terror seized Sophy--a sort of blind fear. Was this the beginning of a new misery? Would Lady Wychcote try to get her son from her? Was she laying plans behind that smooth, narrow brow? Insidiously, little by little, as the dreary years crept by, would she try to wean Bobby from her, influence him against her? Did she lust for him to make of him what she had failed to make of Cecil and Gerald? She felt as if she must snatch Bobby from that well-preserved breast, and run to hide with him in the nethermost parts of the earth. It was a feeling stronger than reason, one of those presentiments which seized her sometimes--which so often came true. A powerful, eerie feeling of _knowing_ without being able to say why--like the knowledge that had come to her when she told Olive Arundel that she would meet Amaldi in a room with three windows. Then she shook the feeling off. The very instance that she had recalled calmed her. There had been three windows, true. But evidently Amaldi was to play no important part in her life. She might not see him for years, if ever. Olive had told her that he was returning to Italy in July.