"Aye, learn to despise her mother," commented Mrs. Bathurst, with sudden bitterness, "after all the trouble I've taken to make her respect me."
"I should never teach her that," Isabel answered quietly. "And I am sure that she would be quite incapable of learning it. Mrs. Bathurst, do you really think that worldly position is a thing that greatly matters to anyone in the long run? I don't."
It was then that a faint, half-grudging admiration awoke in the elder woman's resentful soul, and she looked at Isabel with the first glimmer of kindliness. "You're right," she said slowly, "it don't matter to those who've got it. But to those who haven't—" her eyes glowed red for a moment—"you don't know how it galls," she said.
And then she flushed dully, realizing that she had made a confidante of one of the hated breed.
But Isabel's hand was on hers in a moment; her eyes, full of understanding, looked earnest friendship into hers. "Oh, I know," she said. "It is the little things that gall us all, until—until some great—some fundamental—sorrow wrenches our very lives in twain. And then—and then—one can almost laugh to think one ever cared about them."
Her voice throbbed with feeling. She had lifted the veil for a moment to salve the other woman's bitterness.
And Mrs. Bathurst realized it, and was touched. "Ah! You've suffered," she said.
Isabel bent her head. "But it is over," she said. "I married a man who, they said, was beneath me. But—God knows—he was above me—in every way. And then—I lost him." Her voice sank.
Mrs. Bathurst's hand came down with a clumsy movement upon hers. "He died?" she said.
"Yes." Almost in a whisper Isabel made answer. "For years I would not face it—would not believe it. He went from me so suddenly—oh, God, so suddenly—" a tremor of anguish sounded in the low words; but in a moment she raised her head, and her eyes were shining with a brightness that no pain could dim. "It is over," she said. "It is quite, quite over. My night is past and can never come again. I am waiting now for the full day. And I know that I have not very long to wait. I have not seen him—no, I have not seen him. But—twice now—I have heard his voice."