Joyce sat suddenly upright.
"The worst!" she exclaimed, laughing bitterly. "Pray, sir, how long is this suspense to continue? Why do you delay?" She thrust forward two little white hands, two slender wrists. "Here! why do you not place the handcuffs upon me, and drag me to prison? You began your work this morning—tell me, why do you torture me with this delay? Is a prolongation of it a part of what I have to endure? O my God! my God! let my humiliation be complete!" She was quite hysterical, her manner so wild and unnatural that he felt the futility of attempting to reason with her.
"The worst!" she repeated. "God knows how bad it is when I am conscious of a feeling of gladness that papa—cruelly as he died—is not here to witness it."
"Hush, Joyce!" commanded the mother.
"I will say it," Joyce cried; "it is but the truth. Were poor papa not dead, this would kill him! What was it he dreaded? What was it he feared? Mamma, you know! Oh, God help me! God help me!" Throwing her arms about her mother's neck, she once more hid her face on the other's shoulder, and burst into a storm of weeping.
"The first time," whispered Mrs. Westbrook, unmoved—meaning, doubtless, that it was the first time Joyce had found the relief of tears. She strove to soothe the distressed girl; but her nature, clearly, had forgotten how to spend itself through the gentler and more gracious feminine channels, and for the moment she appeared stiff and awkward.
With manner subdued, as if he were in a sick-chamber, Mr. Converse addressed the mother, striving through her to reassure the almost frenzied girl.
"I shall presently know a number of things which have been kept from me until now,—which I should have known days ago. I hope your daughter's and Mr. Fairchild's reasons for silence will have been removed. With the facts known as they should be, Miss Joyce's causes for anxiety and worry will disappear in a large measure, and she need no longer fear that I shall misunderstand her or place a false interpretation upon circumstances over which she has had no control. There has been too much that is false: her position has been false, as has been the Doctor's and Mr. Clay's. She had come to a realization of all this for herself."
"It was Charlotte," Mrs. Westbrook interpellated in a strange, hard voice. "It was Charlotte Fairchild who influenced Joyce to speak."
Converse eyed her curiously.