Meanwhile Catharine, who showed an
interest in Hester which surprised both him and Rose, began to question
him on the subject of Philip Meryon. Meryon's mother, it seemed, had been
an intimate friend of one of Flaxman's sisters, Lady Helen Varley, and
Flaxman was well acquainted with the young man's most unsatisfactory
record. He drew a picture of the gradual degeneracy of the handsome lad
who had been the hope and delight of his warm-hearted, excitable mother;
of her deepening disappointment and premature death.
"Helen kept up with him for a time, for his mother's sake, but unluckily
he has put himself beyond the pale now, one way and another. It is too
disastrous about this pretty child! What on earth does she see in him?"
"Simply a means of escaping from her home," said Rose--"the situation
working out! But who knows whether he hasn't got a wife already? Nobody
should trust this young man farther than they can see him."
"It musn't--it can't be allowed!" said Catharine, with energy. And, as
she spoke, she seemed to feel again the soft bloom of Hester's young
cheek against her own, just as when she had drawn the girl to her, in
that instinctive caress. The deep maternity in Catharine had never yet
found scope enough in the love of one child.
Then, with a still keener sense of the various difficulties rising along
Meynell's path, Flaxman and Rose returned to the anxious discussion of
Barron's move and how to meet it.
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