“Florence! my life!” said Edith, hurriedly, “listen to me. I cannot bear to see this grief. Be calmer. You see that I am composed, and is it nothing to me?”
She resumed her steady voice and manner as she said the latter words, and added presently:
“Not wholly estranged. Partially: and only that, in appearance, Florence, for in my own breast I am still the same to you, and ever will be. But what I do is not done for myself.”
“Is it for me, Mama?” asked Florence.
“It is enough,” said Edith, after a pause, “to know what it is; why, matters little. Dear Florence, it is better—it is necessary—it must be—that our association should be less frequent. The confidence there has been between us must be broken off.”
“When?” cried Florence. “Oh, Mama, when?”
“Now,” said Edith.
“For all time to come?” asked Florence.
“I do not say that,” answered Edith. “I do not know that. Nor will I say that companionship between us is, at the best, an ill-assorted and unholy union, of which I might have known no good could come. My way here has been through paths that you will never tread, and my way henceforth may lie—God knows—I do not see it—”
Her voice died away into silence; and she sat, looking at Florence, and almost shrinking from her, with the same strange dread and wild avoidance that Florence had noticed once before. The same dark pride and rage succeeded, sweeping over her form and features like an angry chord across the strings of a wild harp. But no softness or humility ensued on that. She did not lay her head down now, and weep, and say that she had no hope but in Florence. She held it up as if she were a beautiful Medusa, looking on him, face to face, to strike him dead. Yes, and she would have done it, if she had had the charm.