had no life but in him, that for her there was no
future save Geoff's future. Even now it seemed guilt in her that she
should have calculations of her own.

And as for saying anything to him on the subject, how could she do it?
It was impossible. Had he been a young man, with some acquaintance with
life, she thought it would not have been so hard; or had he been a mere
child, to whom she could have said that Theo was to be his new papa. But
ten; a judge and a critic; a creature who knew so much and so little. Half
a dozen times she cleared her throat to begin, to lead the conversation
back to Theo, to make some attempt at disclosure: but another look at
his face chilled the words on her lips. She could not do it: how could
she ever do it? They went out and had a long drive together; they strolled
about the park afterwards before dinner, the boy hanging as was his
habit upon her arm, pressed close to her, talking--about everything
in heaven and earth: but never loosening that claim which was supreme,
that proprietorship in her which she had never contested till now,
never herself doubted. Geoff meant to be very good to his mother, her
protector, her support, as soon as he should be big enough. She was to
be his chief companion, always with him, his alone, all his, as she was
now. Any other reading of life was not possible to him. He felt sure
there was something about Theo which he had not been told, some story
which he would get mamma to tell him sooner or later, but never that
this story could interfere with himself and his mother; that was
impossible, beyond the range of the boy's wildest misgivings.

As for Lady Markland, she was more than silenced, she was overawed by
this certainty. She let him run on, her own thoughts drifting away,
pulled up now and then by an importunate, repeated question, then
wandering again, but not far, only to this impossibility of making Geoff
understand. How should she convey to him the first germ of the fact that
mother and son are not one; that they separate and part in the course of
nature; that a woman in the flower of her life does not necessarily
centre every wish in the progress of a little boy? How to tell him this,
how to find a language which could express it, in which such a horrible
fact could be told! To herself it was terrible, a thing foreign to all
her tenets, to all her principles. Even now that she had done it and
bound herself for ever, and raised this wall between her