Yes, she was speaking the truth, and, after all, he didn’t know that it mattered very much. Dorothy was dead, either way, but, yes, it did matter. It mattered enormously, because of Dorothy’s sons. If John had known, there must have been disclosures at the trial, things said against Reuben, ordinary enough but not the things he cared to have Dorothy’s sons know about their father. It wasn’t criminal to have seduced a woman twenty years ago, and the exceptional thing about Reuben was that he had seduced no more women, that he had not abused his position as employer. Needham was known, with grim humor, as “the father of his people.” Whereas Reuben had been Dorothy’s husband. He saw the trial and that disclosure insulting to Dorothy’s memory. He heard the jeers of Needham and his kind. Hepplestall, Gentleman Hepplestall, reduced by public ordeal to a common brutishness with the coarse libertines he had despised! He saw Dorothy’s sons contemptuous of their father. This, they would take occasion to think, was where factory-owning led a man. “You’re sure of this?” he asked. “You’re absolutely sure he did not know he is my son?” “Absolutely,” she said. “Ah,” he said, “that’s good. If he had known, I believe I must have taken measures to defeat justice. I should have done all in my power to have spirited him away before the trial, and I believe I should have contrived it. I feel quite keenly enough about the matter to have done that.” Which was, to Phoebe, confirmation of her belief in his omnipotence. “But, as it is,” he went on, “as it is, thank God, the law can take its course.” He was back in his chair now, looking at her with a relief that was almost a smile, if tigerish. She, he was thinking, might still speak to his discomfiture if she were put in the box at the trial, but he would see that she was not called. There was no need to call her to establish John’s absence from home that night, when he had been caught red-handed. They could do without Phoebe, and he would take care they should. “Can take its course,” she repeated, bewildered. What had Reuben meant if not, incredibly, that had she told John of her “shame,” he would have been saved now, but that, as it was, John must--“But it cannot tak’ its course, John is your son. Your son. Reuben, he’s your son. You cannot hang your son.” “He killed my wife.” “But you haven’t understood. They haven’t told you. John was not himself. He--” “Drunk?” “No, no. Oh, Reuben. He was crazed with grief on account of his wife. Don’t they tell you when the likes of that chances in the factory? Annie Bradshaw, that was John’s wife and your daughter-in-law--she bore a child on the floor in there and died. You must have heard of it.” Reuben nodded. “These women,” he said, “are always cutting it too fine.” His gesture disclaimed responsibility for the reckless greed of women.