“I cannot tell, Mama. I have no means of knowing. Dear Mama!” cried Florence, clinging to her as for help, and hiding her face upon her bosom, “I know that you have seen—”
“Stay! Stop, Florence.” Edith turned so pale, and spoke so earnestly, that Florence did not need her restraining hand upon her lips. “Tell me all about Walter first; let me understand this history all through.”
Florence related it, and everything belonging to it, even down to the friendship of Mr Toots, of whom she could hardly speak in her distress without a tearful smile, although she was deeply grateful to him. When she had concluded her account, to the whole of which Edith, holding her hand, listened with close attention, and when a silence had succeeded, Edith said:
“What is it that you know I have seen, Florence?”
“That I am not,” said Florence, with the same mute appeal, and the same quick concealment of her face as before, “that I am not a favourite child, Mama. I never have been. I have never known how to be. I have missed the way, and had no one to show it to me. Oh, let me learn from you how to become dearer to Papa Teach me! you, who can so well!” and clinging closer to her, with some broken fervent words of gratitude and endearment, Florence, relieved of her sad secret, wept long, but not as painfully as of yore, within the encircling arms of her new mother.
Pale even to her lips, and with a face that strove for composure until its proud beauty was as fixed as death, Edith looked down upon the weeping girl, and once kissed her. Then gradually disengaging herself, and putting Florence away, she said, stately, and quiet as a marble image, and in a voice that deepened as she spoke, but had no other token of emotion in it:
“Florence, you do not know me! Heaven forbid that you should learn from me!”
“Not learn from you?” repeated Florence, in surprise.
“That I should teach you how to love, or be loved, Heaven forbid!” said Edith. “If you could teach me, that were better; but it is too late. You are dear to me, Florence. I did not think that anything could ever be so dear to me, as you are in this little time.”
She saw that Florence would have spoken here, so checked her with her hand, and went on.