Mariposa, again thinking that her mind was wandering, tried to smile, and answered gently:
“Your marriage certificate, dear. You were only married once.”
“I was married twice,” said Lucy, and handed the girl the two papers.
Still supposing her mother slightly delirious, the daughter took the papers and looked at them. The one her eye first fell on was that of the original marriage. She read the names without at first realizing whose they were. Then the significance of the “Lucy Fraser” came upon her. Her glance leaped to the second paper, and at the first sweep of her eyes over it she saw it was the marriage certificate of her father and mother, Daniel Moreau and Lucy Fraser, dated at Placerville twenty-five years before. She turned back to the other paper, now more than bewildered. She held it near her face, as though it were difficult to read, and in the dead silence of the room it began to rustle with the trembling of her hand. A fear of something hideous and overwhelming seized her. With pale lips she read the names, and the date, antedating by five years the other certificate.
“Mother!” she cried, in a wild voice of inquiry, dropping the paper on the bed.
Lucy, raised on her pillows, was looking at her with a haggard intentness. All the vitality left in her expiring body seemed concentrated in her eyes.
“I was married twice,” she said slowly.
“But how? When? What does it mean? Mother, what does it mean?”
“I was married twice,” she repeated. “In St. Louis to Jake Shackleton, and in Placerville, five years after, to Dan Moreau. And I was never divorced from Jake. It was not according to the law. I was never Dan’s lawful wife.”
The girl sat staring, the meaning of the words slowly penetrating her brain. She was too stunned to speak. Her face was as white as her mother’s. For a tragic moment these two white faces looked at each other. The mother’s, with death waiting to claim her, was void of all stress or emotion. The daughter’s, waking to life, was rigid with horrified amaze.