"Friends!" said the girl, bitterly. "Friends!"
"Yes, friends!" cried Eddring. "Surely you know that Blount and I have moved heaven and earth trying to find you. Why you should go, why you should leave every one in ignorance and take up with mummery like this—it is something no sane person can tell. You have not done right, Miss Lady. You have not done right!"
The girl raised her head, a flame of anger upon her own cheek at this presumption. Yet she reserved her speech, and by gesture led Eddring to a spot concealed by the ivy-covered lattice. Her cheeks burned all the more hotly as Eddring went on.
"What mockery!" he cried.
"Yes, what mockery!" repeated Miss Lady. "What mockery that you should say these things to me! What had I up there? What was I? I was a servant, a dependent. Besides all that, things came up which would have driven any decent girl away. I could do nothing else but go. Oh, you don't know all. You can't be just, for you don't know."
"But your mother?"
"You mean Mrs. Ellison? She was not my mother, Mr. Eddring. I thought you knew that. That is one reason why I am here."
"She was not your mother? Then that was true?"
"She never was. She disappeared out of my life, and I know little about her now, excepting that she was the only mother I ever knew. There has been deception of some sort. There were so many sad and troublesome things that I could no longer endure my life as it was. I went away. I came here, I found a home."
"But Colonel Blount?"