Читать книгу Some Do Not... онлайн

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Father Consett swung round like a man that has been shot at.

'Whose?' he asked, and he pointed a dirty finger at his interlocutress. 'It was that blackguard Drake's, wasn't it? I've long suspected that.'

'It was probably Drake's,' Mrs Satterthwaite said.

'Then,' the priest said, 'in the face of the pains of the hereafter how could you let that decent lad in the hotness of his sin...?'

'Indeed,' Mrs Satterthwaite said, 'I shiver sometimes when I think of it. Don't believe that I had anything to do with trepanning him. But I couldn't hinder it. Sylvia's my daughter, and dog doesn't eat dog.'

'There are times when it should,' Father Consett said contemptuously.

'You don't seriously,' Mrs Satterthwaite said, 'say that I, a mother, if an indifferent one, with my daughter appearing in trouble, as the kitchenmaids say, by a married man--that I should step in and stop a marriage that was a Godsend...'

'Don't,' the priest said, 'introduce the sacred name into an affair of Piccadilly bad girls...' He stopped. 'Heaven help me,' he said again, 'don't ask me to answer the question of what you should or shouldn't have done. You know I loved your husband like a brother, and you know I've loved you and Sylvia ever since she was tiny. And I thank God that I am not your spiritual adviser, but only your friend in God. For if I had to answer your question I could answer it only in one way.' He broke off to ask: 'Where is that woman?'