“Anne!” she simply said, with a little shrug.
“Oh, mother—mother! I think I must be going mad!” Anne was on her knees at the bedside, her face buried in the coverlet. It was easier to speak to her while her eyes were hidden, and Kate laid a hand on her hair.
“Not mad, dear; but decidedly over-strung.” She heard the note of magnanimity in her own voice.
“But can you forgive me—ever?”
“Nonsense, dear; can I do anything else?”
“But then—if you do forgive me, really—why must you go away? Why won’t you promise to stay with us?”
Kate Clephane lay against her pillows and meditated. Her hand was still in Anne’s hair; she held the girl’s head gently against the coverlet, still not wishing her own face to be too closely scrutinized. At length she spoke.
“I didn’t mean to tell you just yet; and you must tell no one.” She paused, and rallied her failing courage. “I can’t promise to stay with you, dear, because I may be going to get married too.” The first words were the most difficult to say; after that she heard her voice going on steadily. “Fred Landers has asked me to marry him; and I think I shall accept.... No; don’t hug me too hard, child; my head still aches—There; now you understand, don’t you? And you won’t scold me any more? But remember, it’s a secret from every one. It’s not to be spoken of till after you’re married.... Now go.”
After Anne had left her, subdued but jubilant, she lay there and remembered, with a twinge of humiliation, that the night before she had hurried downstairs in a mad rush to death. Anything—anything to escape from the coil of horror closing in on her!... And it had sufficed to her to meet Enid Drover in the hall, with that silly chatter about the house next door, to check the impulse, drive her back into the life she was flying from.... She reflected with self-derision that all her suicidal impulses seemed to end in the same way; by landing her in the arms of some man she didn’t care for. Then she remembered Anne’s illuminated face, and lay listening to the renewed life of the house, the bustle of happy preparations going on all about her.
“Poor Fred! Well—if it’s what he wants—” she thought. What she herself wanted, all she now wanted, was never again to see that dreadful question in Anne’s eyes. And she had found no other way of evading it.