“You should have married him—at once,” I cried.
“It was too late,” she answered. “He had separated himself from me forever by entering a profession which I despised. He had entered the Church.”
A horrible thought flashed into my mind.
“The other man,” I whispered, with burning cheeks, for she was my mother.
She pointed out of the window—pointed along that narrow, hateful path which threaded the plantation.
“He is dead,” she faltered. “He died—there!”
By this time my sense of horror was almost numbed. I could speak almost calmly. I felt as though I was standing on the world’s edge. Nothing more mattered. The end had come.
“My father killed him,” I said, almost calmly.
She looked away from me and fixed her eyes upon a particular spot in the carpet.
“Ask no questions, child,” she said, sadly. “You know enough now. There were some things which it were wiser for you not to know.”