"Presently, ma'am. This is Miss Blakeney. Miss Blakeney, my mother."
Frances rose and curtsied. The Dowager inclined her head perhaps the eighth part of an inch.
"Miss Blakeney," she said. "I gather from Lorimer that you have written to my son twice."
"Three times, ma'am, if you count today."
"I do not count today. Today you sat yourself down in a pew to which you have no right, in a church full of my son's tenants, in the tenth month of his mourning for his father, and you made a display of a child. I do not doubt that you had your reasons. I should be surprised to find that they were good ones." The Dowager came forward into the room, and her eyes went to the two rings in her son's palm and stayed there a moment, and came away. "My husband was not a saint, Miss Blakeney. I was married to him for thirty years and I was under no illusions. If you have come to tell us that he had a natural son, I dare say you are right, and I dare say provision should be made. My son will make it. There is an excellent school at Richmond in Yorkshire, I am told, where boys are very well grounded and the masters are discreet. He could be sent there at Michaelmas, at the family's expense, and you could be paid a sum to compensate you for your trouble, and that would be an end of it."
"With respect, ma'am," said Frances, "I did not come to be compensated for my trouble. My trouble is six years old and standing in front of you holding a cup of chocolate. I do not want him compensated for, or sent to Yorkshire to be discreet. I want him to grow up knowing who his father was, and I want his father's brother to know him. And if, when I am dead, there is no one else, I want to be sure that somebody in this house will open the door. That is all. I am quite able to earn his bread and mine."
"Upon eighty-four pounds?"
So Lorimer had been listening at the door, or the Dowager had. Frances lifted her chin. "Upon my hands, ma'am, and my eyes. I can transcribe a parish register faster and more accurately than any man in the diocese of Norwich. I have the testimonials. It will do."
The Dowager looked at her for a long moment. It was not, Frances thought, a cruel look. It was the look of a woman who had been holding something up off the ground for a very long time, and was very tired, and had just seen that it was a good deal heavier than she had supposed.
"We will speak of it tomorrow," said the Dowager. "You will stay tonight, of course. Mrs. Pargeter will find you a room. Tristram, I am going upstairs. I have a headache." She turned to go, and turned back, and said, in a different voice, almost as if it had got out by itself: "What did you call the boy?"