Mrs. Vivian blanched before the suddenness of the attack, but she held her ground.
“You absurd child, what in the world could he be to me? It is easy enough to see he has no eyes for any one but you.”
“And before I came?”
Lorraine took a step forward, and for a moment the two women faced each other squarely. The eyes of each were a little hard, the expressions a little flinty; but behind the older woman’s was a scornful, unscrupulous indifference to any moral aspect; behind the younger’s a hunted, rather pitiful hopelessness. The ugly things of life had caught the one in their talons and held her there for good and all, more or less a willing slave, the soul of the younger was still alive, still conscious, still capable of distinguishing the good and desiring it.
The mother turned away at last with a little harsh laugh.
“Before you came he was nothing to me. He never has been anything.”
Without waiting for Lorraine to speak, she turned again, and added:
“If you weren’t a fool, you would perceive he is treating you better than ninety-nine men in a hundred. He has suggested marriage. The others might not have done.”
“Oh! I’m not a fool in that way,” came the bitter reply, “but I’ve wondered once or twice what your attitude would have been, supposing—er—he had been one of the ninety-nine!”
Mrs. Vivian was saved replying by the unexpected appearance of Frank Raynor himself. Entering the room with a quick step, he suddenly stopped short and looked from one to the other. Something in their expressions told him what had transpired. He turned sharply on the mother.