“I’m sure you do, child.” The Beaubien got up and walked slowly around the room, as if to summon her strength. Then she returned to her chair.
“I’m going to tell you,” she said firmly. “You are right, and I have been wrong. It concerns you. And you have help that I have not. I––I have lost a great deal of money.”
Carmen laughed in relief. “Well, dear me! that’s nothing.”
The Beaubien smiled sadly. “I agree with you. Mr. Ames may have my money. I have discovered in the past few months that there are better things in life. But––” her lips tightened, and her eyes half closed––“he can not have you!”
“Oh! He wants me?”
“Yes. Listen, child: I know not why it is, but you awaken something in every life into which you come. The woman I was a year ago and the woman I am to-day meet almost as strangers now. Why? The only answer I can give is, you. I don’t know what you did to people in South America; I can only surmise. Yet of this I am certain, wherever you went you made a path of light. But the effect you have on people differs with differing natures. Just why this is, I do not know. It must have something to do with those mental laws of which I am so ignorant, and of which you know so much.”
Carmen looked at her in wondering anticipation. The Beaubien smiled down into the face upturned so lovingly, and went on:
“From what you have told me about your priest, Josè, I know that you were the light of his life. He loved you to the complete obliteration of every other interest. You have not said so; but I know it. How, indeed, could it be otherwise? On the other hand, that heartless Diego––his mad desire to get possession of you was only animal. Why should you, a child of heaven, arouse such opposite sentiments?”
“Dearest,” said the girl, laying her head on the woman’s knees, “that isn’t what’s worrying you.”