The young man drew close to her chair, for though his whole soul recoiled from sympathy with her, he forced himself to remember that she was his mother, and in tears.
"Why do you dislike these old people so much?" he urged, with an attempt at soothing her.
"Because he liked them!" she answered, dashing his proffered hand aside; "because his low tastes followed him to the last; he was always talking of the creature that died the night you were born. He cared more for her to the last, than he ever did for me; and I hate them for it. Now, are you satisfied?"
"Mother, you are talking of things that I do not understand."
"Well, your father was engaged to Anna, the girl that died in the old hovel down yonder; engaged to her when he married me."
"Then my father committed a great wrong!"
"A great wrong! Who ever doubted it, I should like to know? Even to think of her after marrying me—to say nothing of the way he went on—sometimes talking about her in my presence, with tears in his eyes. Once, once, would you believe it! he said—to me—me, his lawful wife, that your eyes—it was when you just began to walk—that my own baby's eyes put him in mind of her."
"I know very little of my father, nothing in fact, for he was a reserved man, always; but it is hard to believe that he would willfully do this foul wrong to a woman."
"Willfully! I wish you could have seen him when I, with the proper spirit of a woman, felt it my duty to expostulate with him about his feelings for that creature; how he took me up as if I were to blame for being young and beautiful, and engaged in the bazar just under his hotel, as if I had some design in standing at the door about meal-times, or could help him coming in after collars and cravats afterward, and, and"—
She stopped suddenly, and all the sallow wrinkles of her face burned with a crimson more vivid than exposure in the actual commission of a crime would have kindled there. Her mean spirit cowered beneath the looks of surprise that her son fixed upon her, as this confession of original poverty escaped her lips.