Stella's face softened indescribably. The memory of her child did for her what all her passion for Harry Luttrell could not do. It restored her youth. Her eyes grew tender, her mouth quivered, the look of conflict vanished altogether.
"We had good times together, my baby and I. I took her to the sea. It sounds foolish, but we were more like a couple of children together than mother and daughter"; and Joan, looking at the delicate, porcelain-like figure in front of her, smiled in response.
"Yes, I can understand that."
"She was with me every minute," Stella Croyle resumed. "I watched her so, I gave her so much of me that when I had seen her off at the station with her nurse at the end of the month, I was left behind, as weak and limp as an invalid. I lived for her, Joan, believe that at all events in my favour! There was no one else."
"I do believe it."
"Then one year in the winter she did not come to me."
"They kept her back!" cried Joan. "But you had the right to her."
"Yes. And I went down to Exeter to her father's house, to fetch her away."
It was curious that Stella Croyle, who was speaking of her own distressful life, told her story with a quiet simplicity of tone, as if she had bent her neck in submission to the hammer strokes of her destiny; whereas Joan, who was but listening to griefs of another, was stirred to a compassion which kindled her face and made her voice shake.
"Oh, they hadn't sent her away! She was waiting for you," she cried eagerly.