She stretched out her hands to him to touch his, to draw him near: but he still hung at a little distance, a tall shadow in the dark.
“It is not for myself this time. It is Lew: he was very much touched with what you said to-day. He’ll go, I believe--whether with me or not. I might see him away, and then come back. But the chief thing after all, you know, is the money. You said you would give him----”
“Oh, Robbie, God be praised!--whatever he required for his passage, and to give him a new beginning; but you’ll not leave me again, not you, not you!”
“I did not say I would,” he said, with a querulous tone in his voice. “His passage! He wouldn’t go back to America, you know.”
“No, my dear, I did not suppose he would. I thought--one of the islands,” said Mrs Ogilvy, in subdued tones.
“One of the islands! I don’t know what you mean” (and, indeed, neither did she), “unless it were New Zealand, perhaps--that’s an island: but you would not banish him there, mother. Lew thinks he might go to India. He might begin again, and do better there.”
“India--that is far, far away--and a dear passage, and all the luxuries you want there. Robbie, I would not grudge it for myself--it is for you, my dear.”
“If he had plenty of money, it would be his best chance.”
Mrs Ogilvy slid softly off the bed, where she had been listening. She was as generous as a princess--as princesses used to be in the time of the fairy tales; but it startled her that this stranger should expect “plenty of money” from her hands. “How could we give him that?” she said: “and whatever went to him, it would be taken from you, Robbie. If you will fix on a sum, I will do everything I can. I do not grudge him--no, no. My heart is wae for him. But to despoil my only son, my one bairn, for a stranger. It is not just, it is not what I should do----”
“Would you give him a thousand pounds, mother?”
“A thousand pounds!” she cried with a shriek. “Laddie, are ye wild?--the greatest part of what you will have--the half, or near the half, of all. I think one of us is out of our senses, either you or me!”