"Oh, if you loved him as you say you do ... as I believe you do ... wouldn't you trust him? I'll talk to him. I can tell him anything. I'll tell him exactly how things stand. I'll tell him what I've promised you. Only don't take him away from me altogether. I couldn't bear it ... I couldn't." She turned back on herself. "Why won't you believe in him?" "You should know why that's impossible. Haven't I told you his history? You've only known him for a year. I've had him for seventeen and loved him all the time." She became almost passionate. "He's my son. And all those years my love has been full of the awful bitterness of his trouble. The tears! The disappointments! You know nothing of them. You can't realize how I've struggled and schemed and had my hopes raised and dashed to the ground ... time after time. To see the person that you love best in the world, a part of your own body, living without a soul: a thief, a liar--that's the plain truth--inhuman and cruel ... But you know as well as I do what he was." "I do know what he was." "And now, thanks to your husband--God knows I'm grateful!--he's better. He's what I knew he ought to have been all these awful years. And then you come on the scene--you, who've borne nothing of all the years before--and begin to drag him down again. You must be mad to think I could risk it!" "But don't I know all this? Do you think I'm less anxious than you are that he should stay as he is? Only trust me ... trust me! His future ... think of that...." Mrs. Payne laughed bitterly, but Gabrielle persisted. "His future ... My husband says that he can make a success of him. He can take a high place in a Government examination; he can get into the diplomatic service. Just believe that I love him too much to stand in his way. Why, I can even help him. If he does this I know that he'll want influence. _You_ haven't influence to help him. I don't want to belittle you, but I know you've nothing but your money, while I _can_ help him. My cousin is Lord Halberton. He's been a Cabinet minister. There's no knowing what he mightn't do with his help. If you love anyone as I do him, why shouldn't you give your life to his interests? That's what I'd do. I'd think of nothing else. I'd give all my thoughts to him. And I promise ... oh, I promise faithfully, that I won't let him love me ... if only you'll let me love him." Mrs. Payne stiffened. "You're trying to bribe me," she said, "and I'm not the kind of person who can be bribed. I don't care that much about his future! Until the last month I never so much as dreamed that any future of that kind was possible. It's quite enough for me that he should settle down here into the sort of life that his father would have lived if he'd been spared. I don't want to share his successes with you...." "Ah, you're jealous!"