Julia's quiet assurance, her regretful firmness, seemed to be
breaking his heart. She was in white to-day, and in the thin September
sunlight, among the blossoming roses, she somehow suggested the calm
placidity of a nun who looks back at her days in the world with a
tender, smiling pity. The child had left her play, and stood close to
her mother's side, one of Julia's hands caught in both her own.
"Anna," Jim said desperately, "won't you ask Mother to come to London
with Dad?"
Anna regarded him gravely. She did not understand the situation, but she
answered, with a child's curious instinct for the obvious excuse:
"But Grandmother needs her!"
"I never asked you to give her up, Julie," Jim said, as if trying to
remind her that he had not been so merciless as she. Julia's eyes
widened with a quick alarm, her breast rose, but she answered
composedly:
"That I would have fought."
"And you have always had as much money--" Jim began again, trying to
rally the arguments with which he had felt sure to overwhelm her.
"I spent that as much for your sake as for mine," Julia said soberly.
"She is a Studdiford.
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