“What do you mean? What do you want?” demanded Joan, with considerable sharpness.
“Joan—my dear!” Marian spoke the words as if they were wrenched from her, not in the least knowing what she said. “O, my dear Joan—darling!”
“I am Miss Brooke, if you please!” Joan grew as white as pasteboard, standing haughtily upright. “Are you out of your mind, Marian? How dare you speak to me like that?”
“She doesn’t know! O, God, help me!” cried Marian, in thick, broken tones, staggering back against the sideboard. “I’m wrong—wrong—oh, help me!”
Joan stood looking, as deep sobs burst from Marian’s laboring chest. Two long minutes of silence were broken by no other sounds.
“I don’t understand what is the matter with you to-day—” Joan said this coldly and distinctly. “You seem to me to be talking nonsense. I don’t wish to say anything to give you pain, for I know you have been good to Mrs. Rutherford all through her illness. But of course I cannot be spoken to in such a way.”
“No, no; I was wrong,” moaned Marian, in a tone of such anguish that Joan could not turn away, could not walk out of the room and leave her. “I didn’t mean to say anything—I didn’t think I could be so weak!” Then the passionate sobs came back, and Marian leaned over the corner of the sideboard, wringing her hands again. “But, oh, I don’t know how to bear it—I don’t know how to bear it—now I’ve seen your face again! If you can’t say one kind word to me, I almost think—I—shall die.”
“I do not understand. What difference can it make to you how I choose to speak?” asked Joan.
What difference—and Joan was her own child! But the words that quivered on Marian’s lips were not uttered.
“It is quite an absurd fancy. I never knew anybody behave in such a way,” said Joan, refusing to face certain wild conjectures springing up in her mind. “Do leave off crying, and be sensible. Mrs. Rutherford may want you at any moment. Of course I feel kindly towards you, and so we all do, for your care of mother, but I do not in the least know what you mean by all this. Please have no more scenes.”