“I don’t know. It does not seem likely, Maimie, but there is no knowing. We may hear yet, some day.”
“I am afraid he doesn’t care for me so much as I thought he did,” she murmured. “And yet he really did seem kind, he really seemed fond of me. Aunt Marion, I was so angry when I first came, because you thought he did not mean to write. But after all you were right.”
“We may hope the best still,” I said.
“Ah, but I should not have been so angry. It was very very wrong. I am trying hard not to be so easily vexed at things.”
“I think you are different since your illness, Maimie.”
“Things are different,” she answered. “I’m not so dreadfully alone now; and I know you do all love me. It is such a feeling, to know that nobody cares for one. When I first came to London, I had nobody in the world except father, and I couldn’t bear to think that perhaps he did not really love to have me with him. I’m not sure, Aunt Marion, that I didn’t really believe the same as you thought, deep down in my heart; but I wouldn’t let myself think it. I couldn’t! it was too dreadful, when I had nobody else.”
“Had you no friends in America?” I asked.
“Oh—friends—I don’t know. People were kind, but I don’t think I cared for anybody very particularly,—not as I care for you.”
“Perhaps, after all, we shall find some day that your father has had a good reason for his silence,” I observed. “Churton always did things in an odd way.”
“I would much rather think him, odd than cold,” said Maimie, sighing. “Yes, perhaps, some day,—we shall know all about it by-and-by, I suppose. But that may be a long way off. And I do so want to be useful now.”