"Oh, well!" said Mrs. Twining. She spoke the two brief words in a sort of abrupt whimper, taking a step or two toward the calm sheeted form of her dead husband. "S'pose he is here. I can't use that money, and I won't!"
Claire felt the hideous taste of those words. They who have thus far read this chronicle must have read it ill if they are not sure that no love for a mother so ceaselessly froward and hostile could now survive in her daughter's heart. But though she knew her mother capable of dread acts if occasion favored, Claire was thunderstruck by this last announcement.
It appeared to her monstrous and barbarous, as it indeed was. She clenched both hands, for an instant, and her eyes flashed.
"Say what you mean!" she retorted, not raising her voice, because of that piteous reverence which the still, prone shape inspired. "Can you mean that you will let charity bury our dead for us? Can you mean that?"
Mrs. Twining gave a quick, grim nod. "Yes, I do mean it," she returned. "And if you wasn't a fool you'd see why."
Claire folded her arms. Her next words came with grave, measured composure from white, set lips. "I may be a fool," she said, "but thank God I haven't your kind of wisdom! Keep your money, Mother. Do as you threaten. But when Potter's Field takes poor Father's body, that will be the end of everything between you and me. Remember that I said this. I will never speak to you, never notice you again, if you do so shameful a thing. If you spend that money as duty and as decency should both prompt, I will work for you, slave for you, cling to you always. But if not, we are no longer mother and daughter. You see, I don't speak with heat or with haste. I am perfectly calm. Now choose which course you will take. But never say that I did not fully warn you, when it will be too late for retraction!"
There was a splendidly quiet impressiveness in this speech of Claire's. She went and knelt once more beside her father's body after she had finished it. She had resolved upon no further entreaty or argument. The very atrocity of her mother's proposed design seemed to place continued discussion of it beyond the pale of all womanly dignity.
Mrs. Twining was too coarse a soul to see the matter as Claire saw it. She preferred to take the chances that her daughter would relent when the ignoble interment was over.
To-morrow came, and she gave no sign of altering her purpose. Claire scarcely addressed a word to her during this day. A few of the Greenpoint folk called at the house. Among these was Josie Morley, distressed at the tidings of death, and prepared to utter voluble regrets for having lost Claire in the crowd during the previous night.
But Claire would see no one. She remained with her father's body in the little room upstairs, locking its door when she thought there was any chance of a visitor being brought thither.