She had not blenched, even then. She had not blenched since. And she
never would blench. In spite of his gorgeous position and his unique
reputation, in spite of her well-concealed but notorious pride in
him, he still went in fear of that ageless woman, whose undaunted eye
always told him that he was still the lad Denry, and her inferior in
moral force. The curve of her thin lips seemed ever to be warning him
that with her pretensions were quite useless, and that she saw through
him and through him to the innermost grottoes of his poor human
depravity.
He caught her eye guiltily.
"Behold the Alderman!" she murmured with grimness.
That was all. But the three words took thirty years off his back,
snatched the half-crown cigar out of his hand and reduced him again to
the raw, hungry boy of Brougham Street. And he knew that he had sinned
gravely in not coming upstairs very much earlier.
"Is that you, father?" called the high voice of Robert from the back
of the screen.
He had to admit to his son that it was he.
The infant lay on his back in Maisie's bed, while his mother sat
lightly on the edge of nurse's bed near by.
"Well, you're a nice chap!" said Edward Henry, avoiding Nellie's
glance, but trying to face his son as one innocent man may face
another--and not perfectly succeeding. He never could feel like a real
father, somehow.
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