boy and him.

Artois had played upon her intellect, had appealed, too, to her
mother's heart.

He had not urged her to try to forget, but he had urged her not
morbidly to remember, not to cherish and to foster the memory of the
tragedy which had broken her life. To go back to that tiny home,
solitary in its beautiful situation, in the changed circumstances
which were hers, would be, he told her, to court and to summon sorrow.
He was even cruel to be kind. When Hermione combated his view,
assuring him that to her Monte Amato was like a sacred place, a place
hallowed by memories of happiness, he recalled the despair in which
that happiness had ended. With all the force at his command, and it
was great, he drew the picture of the life that would be in comparison
with the life that had been. And he told her finally that what she
wished to do was morbid, was unworthy of her strength of character,
was even wicked now that she was a mother. He brought before her mind
those widows who make a cult of their dead. Would she be one of them?
Would she steep a little child in such an atmosphere of memories,
casting a young and tender mind backward into a cruel past instead of
leading it forward into a joyous present? Maurice had been the very
soul of happiness. Vere must be linked with the sunbeams. With his
utmost subtlety Artois described and traced the effect upon a tiny and
sensitive child of a mother's influence, whether for good or evil,
until Hermione, who had a deep reverence for his knowledge of all
phases of human nature, at last, almost in despite of the truth within
her, of the interior voice which said to her, "With you and Vere it
would not be so," caught alarm from his apparent alarm, drew distrust
of herself from his apparent distrust of her.