Despite her natural reserve and the reticence, born of keen humiliation, which she maintained in respect of her mother's affairs, Louise, feeling the need of an experienced woman's counsel, gave to Laura Stedham, her one woman friend in need, a somewhat guarded account of her meeting with Jesse and Judd upon her return from the day in the country. Laura listened to the story in a sort of silent rage. She was not a woman to rant, and even if she had been, the recital that Louise gave her, with the wretched details which Laura could guess at, of her gradual hemming in at the Riverside Drive house, filled the other woman with a sense of anger and disgust beyond the mere power of words. Louise had not previously told Laura of Langdon's proffering her the use of an automobile; she feared that Laura's wrath and alarm over that would be directed against her mother for having made such a situation possible; and her loyalty to her mother never wavered.
At the close of her story, which she gave to Laura in a quiet, rather hopeless way that the older woman found pathetic to a degree, Louise, in a moment of inadvertence, let fall how Judd had greeted her as "daughter." Laura flared at that. But she held herself in, and she asked Louise, quietly enough:
"My dear, there is one thing that I want to ask you. I hope you won't think me intrusive for asking it. It is this: Just why are you remaining at that house? You know the—the circumstances there. I am not trying to influence you. But I want you to tell me just why, since you cannot change the conditions, you deem it necessary to go on living there?"
Louise replied without hesitation.
"I don't lose hope that I may be able to change the conditions some time, dear," she replied. "There would be no use in my staying with my mother if I did not possess that hope."
"But," asked Laura, not pressingly, but with a grave, interested earnestness, "don't you think your chance to change the conditions is almost negligible? Just how can you possibly expect such a change ever to come about?"
"I am hoping," Louise answered bravely, but coloring, "that, if I stay on with my mother, sooner or later she will become ash——"; she could not finish the word "ashamed;"——"she will come to a realization of herself," she took up the thread, "of what the conditions in which she lives mean; of what, eventually, they must bring her to, and bring me to, also. Often I think that she doesn't view it as I do—as we do. She is drifting. She told me that she was. She has lost her moorings. I want to bring her back. I am the only one who could bring her back, am I not? And I can't leave her as long as there is a chance to do that."
"But your own life, dear?" interposed Laura. "You must consider that, you know. You are a very young woman. There is no reason why you should be dragged down."
"I shall not be," replied Louise. "And, if my mother is to be dragged down, if she is to continue in this way, of what use would my life ever be to me? I never could be happy with her in such surroundings, could I? There is only one thing for me to do, dear; stay with her until she sees it all. I know that she will understand sooner or later. She can't help it. She's bound to—to change. I want to help her. I don't ever say anything to her, of course. It would be impossible for me to do that. But she isn't happy as she is now. My mother and I will have a dear, cosy, happy life together yet, Laura, never fear."