But this revelation of the real bigness of the woman caught my allegiance and fixed it. She had sacrificed the thing which was most precious to her to keep her ideal of honor unsullied. I felt that I could never have made a similar sacrifice, but I mentally saluted her for her power to do it.
I realized, too, the reason for Dicky's deference to Mrs. Underwood, which had often puzzled and sometimes angered me. Once when she had given him a raking over for the temper he displayed toward me in her presence, he had said:
"You know I couldn't get angry at you, no matter what you said; I owe you too much."
I had wondered at the time what it was that my husband "owed" Mrs.
Underwood. The riddle was solved for me at last.
I am not an impetuous woman, and I do not know how I ever mustered up courage to do it. But the sight of Lillian Underwood's face as she looked at her baby's picture was too much for me. Without any conscious volition on my part I found my arms around her, and her face pressed against my shoulder.
I expected a storm of grief, for I knew the woman had been holding herself in with an iron hand. But only a few convulsive movements of her shoulders betrayed her emotion and when she raised her face to mine her eyes were less tear-bedewed than my own.
Something stirred me to quick questioning.
"Oh, is there a chance of your having her again?"
"I am always hoping for it," she answered quietly. "When her father married again, several years ago—that was before my marriage to Harry—I hoped against hope that he would give her to me. For he knew—the hound—knew better than anybody else that all his vile charges were false."
Her eyes blazed, her voice was strident, her hands clasped and unclasped. Then, as if a string had been loosened, she sank back in her chair again.