“No—child—you—you don’t understand!” answered Mrs. Lauderdale, with trembling lips.
A passionate burst of weeping hindered her from saying more. Katharine tried to soothe her with voice and hand, but it was of no use. Then she just let her hand rest there, touching her mother’s cheek, and lay quite still, waiting till the storm should pass. It lasted long, for in the midst of her sorrow and indignation there was the acute consciousness of the part she herself had borne in all that had happened.
“It’s my fault, it’s all my fault!” she sobbed, at last.
“No, mother—why? I don’t understand! Try and tell me what you mean.”
Little by little the sobs subsided and Mrs. Lauderdale dried her eyes. Katharine really did not at all understand what was taking place. She thought her mother must be hysterical. Dark women rarely understand the moods of fair ones.
“You don’t know how dreadful it seems to me,” said Mrs. Lauderdale, as she grew calmer. “It seems—somehow—awful! There’s no other word. Your father treating you in such a way—and fighting with Jack! But it isn’t only that—it’s deeper. I’ve done very wrong myself. I’ve been very bad—much worse than you know—”
“You, bad? Oh, mother! You’re losing your head! Don’t say such absurd things. You—well, you did go against Jack and me rather suddenly last winter, and I couldn’t quite forgive you at the time. But it’s going to be all right now.”
Mrs. Lauderdale’s face grew pale again. For a few moments she said nothing, and once or twice she bit her lip.
“I’m going to tell you what it was,” she said, with a sudden impulse—unwise, perhaps, but generous and even noble in its way. “I envied you, dear. That’s why I behaved as I did.”
“Envied me? Envied—me?” Katharine repeated the words slowly and with a wondering emphasis. “Why? What for?”