“It’s me,” said Maud, passionately; “it isn’t the money. And he’s the only person in the world except Win who has ever really liked me. I don’t feel when I’m with him that I’m so ugly and stupid, the way I feel with everybody else. He likes to hear me talk, and when he looks at me I don’t feel as if he was saying to himself, ‘What an ugly girl she is, anyway.’ But I feel that he doesn’t know whether I’m pretty or ugly. He only knows he loves me the way I am.”
She burst into wild tears, and before her mother could answer or arrest her, had brushed past her and fled up the next flight of stairs, the sound of her sobs floating down from the upper darkness to the listener’s ears. Bessie retreated into the boudoir and shut the door.
Maud ran on and burst into her own room, there to throw herself on the bed and weep despairingly for hours. She thought of her lover, the one human being besides her brother who had never made her feel her inferiority, and lying limp and shaken among the pillows, thought, with a wild thrill of longing of the time when she would be free to creep into his arms and hide the ugly face he found so satisfactory upon his heart.
In the morning, before she was up, Bessie visited her and renewed the conversation of the night before. Poor Maud, with a throbbing head and heavy eyes, lay helpless, answering questions that probed the tender secrets of the clandestine courtship, which had been to her an oasis of almost terrifying happiness in the lonely repression of her life. Finally, unable longer to endure her mother’s sarcastic allusions to Latimer’s disingenuousness, she sprang out of bed and ran into the bath-room, which was part of the suite she occupied. Here she turned on both taps, the sound of the rushing water completely drowning her mother’s voice, and sitting on the side of the tub, looked drearily down into the bath, while Bessie’s concluding and indignant sentences rose from the outer side of the door.
Mrs. Shackleton lunched alone that day. Win generally went to his club for his midday meal, and Maud had gone out early and found hospitality at the house of Pussy Thurston. Bessie had done more thinking that morning in the intervals of her domestic duties—she was a notable housekeeper and personally superintended every department of her establishment—and had decided to dedicate part of the afternoon to the society of Mrs. Willers. One of the secrets of Mrs. Shackleton’s success in life had been her power to control and retain interests in divers matters at the same time. Maud’s unpleasant news had not pushed the even more weighty subject of Mariposa into abeyance. It was as prominent as ever in the widow’s mind.
She drove down to The Trumpet office soon after lunch and slowly mounted the long stairs. It would have been a hardship for any other woman of her years and weight, but Bessie’s bodily energy was still remarkable, and she had never indulged herself in the luxury of laziness. At the top of the fourth flight she paused, panting, while the astonished office boy stared at her, recognizing her as the chief’s mother.
Mrs. Willers was in her cubby-hole, with a drop-light sending a little circle of yellow radiance over the middle of the desk. A litter of newspaper cuttings surrounded her, and Miss Peebles, at the moment of Mrs. Shackleton’s entrance, was in the cane-bottomed chair, in which aspirants for journalistic honors usually sat. The rustle of Mrs. Shackleton’s silks and the faint advancing perfume that preceded her, announced an arrival of unusual distinction, and Miss Peebles had turned uneasily in the chair and Mrs. Willers was peering out from the circle of the drop-light, when the lady entered the room.
Miss Peebles rose with a flurried haste and thrust forward the chair, and Mrs. Willers extricated herself from the heaped up newspapers and extended a welcoming hand. The greetings ended, the younger woman bowed herself out, her opinion of Mrs. Willers, if possible, higher even than it had been before.
Mrs. Willers was surprised, but discreetly refrained from showing it. She had known Mrs. Shackleton for several years, and had once heard, from her late chief, that his wife approved her matter and counseled her advancement.
But to have her appear thus unannounced in the intimate heat and burden of office hours was decidedly unexpected. Mrs. Shackleton knew this and proceeded to explain.