"And I thought you were going to order the wedding cake this morning. There is really no time to lose, mother."
"You are right, Isabel, and I must just put back my own sair heartache and look after the ungrateful, thrawart woman's wedding cake. It's untelling what I have done for Christina, and the upsetting ways o' her this morning and the words she said, I'll never forget. I shall come o'er them in my mind as long as I live; and I'll tell her what I think of her behavior, whenever I find a proper opportunity."
"Very well, mother. Tell her flatly your last thought; it will be the best way."
"I will."
"But do go about the cake at once. It is important, and there's none but yourself will be heeded."
Then with a long, deep sigh, she went slowly out of the room, and Isabel watched her affected weakness and indifference with a kind of scornful pity. For women see through women, know intuitively their little tricks and make-beliefs, and for this very reason a daughter's love for her mother—however devoted and self-sacrificing—lacks that something of mystical worship which a son feels for his mother. The daughter knows she wears false hair and false teeth and pink and white powder; the son simply takes her as she looks and thinks "what a lovely mother I have!" The daughter has watched her mother's little schemes for happy household management, and probably helped her in them; the son knows only their completed comfort and their personal pleasure. He never dreams of any policy or management in his mother's words and deeds, and hence he believes in her just as he sees and hears her. And her wisdom and love seem to him so great and so unusual, that an element of reverence—the highest feeling of which man is capable—blends itself with all his conceptions of mother. And the wonder is, that a daughter's love exists, and persists, without it. Knowing all her mother's feminine weaknesses, she loves her devotedly in spite of them—nay, perhaps loves her the more profoundly because of them. And if she is not capable of this affection she does not love her at all.
Isabel watched her mother leave the house on the wedding cake business and then she went to her sister's room. She found her dressing to go out. "I have an appointment at eleven, Isabel," she said, "and I am so glad you have come to sit beside me while I dress. The days are going so fast, and very soon now you will come to my room, and Christina will not be here, any more in this life."
"You will surely come back to your own home sometimes, Christina?"
"No. I shall never enter Traquair House again, unless you are sick and need me—then I would come. I have just been going through my top drawer, Isabel; it was full of old gifts and keepsakes, and I declare they brought tears to my eyes."
"Why? I dare say the givers have forgotten you—they were mostly school friends, and the Campbelton crowd."