"Yes, I believe you. But the worst of it is that she cares for him too--in a way I can't understand. She has some reason, or she thinks she has, for disliking him, as she calls it. She wouldn't tell me. But she cares for him all the same. She has told him, though she won't tell me. There is something horrible in the idea of our children falling in love with each other." Mrs. Bowring spoke quietly, but her pale face and nervous mouth told more than her words. Sir Adam explained to her shortly what had happened on the first evening after Brook's arrival, and how Clare had heard it all, sitting in the shadow just above the platform. Mrs. Bowring listened in silence, covering her eyes with her hands. There was a long pause after he had finished speaking, but still she said nothing. "I should like him to marry her," said Sir Adam at last, in a low voice. She started and looked at him uneasily, remembering how well she had once loved him, and how he had broken her heart when she was young. He met her eyes quietly. "You don't know him," he said. "He loves her, and he will be to her--what I wasn't to you." "How can you say that he loves her? Three weeks ago he loved that Mrs. Crosby." "He? He never cared for her--not even at first." "He was all the more heartless and bad to make her think that he did." "She never thought so, for a moment. She wanted my money, and she thought that she could catch him." "Perhaps--I saw her, and I did not like her face. She had the look of an adventuress about her. That doesn't change the main facts. Your son and she were--flirting, to say the least of it, three weeks ago. And now he thinks himself in love with my daughter. It would be madness to trust such a man--even if there were not the rest to hinder their marriage. Adam--I told you that I forgave you. I have forgiven you--God knows. But you broke my life at the beginning like a thread. You don't know all there has been to forgive--indeed, you don't. And you are asking me to risk Clare's life in your son's hands, as I risked mine in yours. It's too much to ask." "But you say yourself that she loves him." "She cares for him--that was what I said. I don't believe in love as I did. You can't expect me to." She turned her face away from him, but he saw the bitterness in it, and it hurt him. He waited a moment before he answered her. "Don't visit my sins on your daughter, Lucy," he said at last. "Don't forget that love was a fact before you and I were born, and will be a fact long after we are dead. If these two love each other, let them marry. I hope that Clare is like you, but don't take it for granted that Brook is like me. He's not. He's more like his mother." "And your wife?" said Mrs. Bowring suddenly. "What would she say to this?" "My wife," said Sir Adam, "is a practical woman."