"There is no revenge for a woman, Don. They only dream there is—once I dreamed there might be for me. I don't want it now. I am content. There's more pity than revenge about me now. I only want to be fair now, if I can, and now I'm glad—this is my one glorious day. For you're mine. You are my boy—and I'll never say that I am sorry. Because I've got you. They can't help that, can they, Don?"
"He got us out of worse trouble, didn't he? Why did he do that, Mother? What made him look at us the way he did? And what made the other lawyer, Henderson, drop the case? How did they settle it out of court? Lucky for us—but why?" He spoke sharply, abruptly.
A trifle of color came to Aurora Lane's cheeks. "It was his way," she said. "He's a good lawyer—advancing right along, more and more every year, they say. He's always had a hard time getting a start. He's like me."
Don Lane sat silent for a time, but what he thought he held. He cast a discontented glance about him at the meager surroundings of his mother's home, with which he could claim no familiarity.
"How did you manage it, Mother?" he asked, at length. "How did you get me through—big, ignorant loafer that I've been all my life. You say he never helped any. Was he so poor as all that?"
"I couldn't have done it alone," said Aurora Lane, slowly. Mechanically she smoothed down the folds of her gown in her lap as she spoke.
"I have told you you had two mothers, if no father," said she at last, suddenly. "That's almost true. You don't know how much you owe to Miss Julia. She helped me put you through school! It was her little salary and my little earnings—well, they have proved enough."
"Go on!" said he, bitterly. "Tell me more! Humiliate me all you can! Tell me more of what I ought to know. Good God!" He squared his shoulders as if to throw off some weight which he felt upon them.
His mother looked at him in silence for some time. "Shall I tell you all about it, Don?" she said. "All that I may?"
He nodded, frowning. "Let's have it over and done with."