"If it were not unladylike, I should tell you that you are uttering a falsehood."
"Bah! You can tell me so a thousand times, if you want. Why did you never let Claire's mother know her marriage-name or her address until to-day? Why did you keep her in the hospital until to-day? Why, unless you wanted to unloose her, like a raging lioness?"
"Really, Kate, you have passed the bounds of impertinence. You are now simply diverting."
Mrs. Diggs laughed a second time. "I intend to divert you still further, Sylvia, before I have done with you."
Mrs. Lee took a step or two in an oblique direction. The lids of her dark eyes had begun to move rapidly. "I have the option of declining to be bored," she answered, in a muffled voice, "unless you intend personal violence. In that case, you know, there are always the footmen."
"Answer me one question, please, if you have a spark of honesty left. What right had you to believe that Claire Hollister ever wronged her mother?"
"You haven't yet become violent. You are still diverting. So I will answer. She left her alone in poverty, neglect, and misery."
"She left her after a life of tyranny and persecution. She left her a strong, hale, able woman. She left her with ten, twenty times as much money in her pocket as Claire herself had—for Claire had scarcely anything, and this persecuted heroine of a mother had enough money to give her dead husband decent Christian burial, yet refused it. Did she tell you that, Sylvia, when you found her sick in the hospital? Did she tell you how her daughter cried out in grief, beside the very body of a dead and beloved father, that if only he were not laid in Potter's Field—if only he might receive holy rites of interment, she would work, even slave, for her mother's support? Did she tell you—this model and deeply wronged parent—that her child got from her nothing but a surly refusal? Did she tell you that Claire then, and only then, resolved to leave her forever? Did she tell you how Claire, faithful till the last, followed her father, on foot or by street-car, to his pauper grave, and saw the clods heaped over him as if he had been a dead dog, while she, his lawful wife, stayed shamelessly at home? No, Sylvia; I will warrant that she made another plausible story, nearly all false, with just a grain of truth. And you readily accepted it, because it suited your malicious ends to do so!"
By this time Mrs. Lee had produced an exquisite fan of dark satin, painted with charming figures of birds and flowers. While she used the fan, slowly and gracefully, she answered: "And is it possible that you credit this theatrical improbability, Kate?"
Mrs. Diggs looked stern. "I don't merely believe it—I know it," she said. "I have seen the woman. To see her—to hear her speak, was enough. You, too, have had both experiences."