she was forced to hide
from her own child a blush of remorse and shame.
    Whatever people will think? She knew very well what they did think, the
people Winnie had in her mind - the old friends of her husband, and others too,
whose interest she had solicited with such flattering success. She had not known
before what a good beggar she could be. But she guessed very well what inference
was drawn from her application. On account of that shrinking delicacy, which
exists side by side with aggressive brutality in masculine nature, the inquiries
into her circumstances had not been pushed very far. She had checked them by a
visible compression of the lips and some display of an emotion determined to be
eloquently silent. And the men would become suddenly incurious, after the manner
of their kind. She congratulated herself more than once on having nothing to do
with women, who being naturally more callous and avid of details, would have
been anxious to be exactly informed by what sort of unkind conduct her daughter
and son-in-law had driven her to that sad extremity. It was only before the
Secretary of the great brewer M. P. and Chairman of the Charity, who, acting for
his principal, felt bound to be conscientiously inquisitive as to the real
circumstances of the applicant, that she had burst into tears outright and
aloud, as a cornered woman will weep. The thin and polite gentleman, after
contemplating her with an air of being struck all of a heap, abandoned his
position under the cover of soothing remarks. She must not distress herself. The
deed of the Charity did not absolutely specify childless widows. In fact, it did
not by any means disqualify her. But the discretion of the Committee must be an
informed discretion. One could understand very well her unwillingness to be a
burden, etc., etc. Thereupon, to his profound disappointment, Mrs. Verloc's
mother wept some more with an augmented vehemence.
    The tears of that large female in a dark, dusty wig, and ancient silk dress
festooned with dingy white cotton lace, were the tears of genuine distress. She
had wept because she was heroic and unscrupulous and full of love for both her
children. Girls frequently get sacrificed to the welfare of the boys. In this
case she was sacrificing Winnie. By the suppression of truth she was slandering
her. Of course, Winnie was independent, and need not care for the opinion of
people that she would never see and who would never see her; whereas poor Stevie
had nothing in the world he could call his own except his mother'