Had mamma discovered her? With a despairing sense of being caught she looked down at her tell-tale clothes and the unslept-in bed.
“Oh, what shall I ever do?” she thought to herself, confusedly. “I can’t let mamma come in and catch me like this. She’ll ask why on earth I didn’t undress last night. And then what could I ever say? How could I ever explain to her?”
The awful sense of shame-facedness grew upon her still more deeply than ever. She jumped up and whispered through the door, in a very penitent voice, “Oh, mother, I can’t let you in just yet. Do you mind waiting five minutes? Come again by-and-by. I—I—I’m so awfully tired and queer this morning somehow.”
Mrs. Clifford’s voice had an answering little ring of terror in it, as she replied at once, in the same soft tone—
“Very well, darling. That’s all right. Stay as long as you like. Don’t trouble to get up if you’d rather have your breakfast in bed. And don’t hurry yourself at all. I’ll come back by-and-by and see what’s the matter.”
Elma didn’t know why, but by the very tone of her mother’s voice she felt dimly conscious something strange had happened. Mrs. Clifford spoke with unusual gentleness, yet with an unwonted tremor.
“Thank you, dear,” Elma answered through the door, going back to the bedside and beginning to undress in a tumult of shame. “Come again by-and-by. In just five minutes.” It would do her good, she knew, in spite of her shyness, to talk with her mother. Then she folded her clothes neatly, one by one, on a chair; hid the peccant boa away in its own lower drawer; buttoned her neat little embroidered nightdress tightly round her throat; arranged her front hair into a careless disorder; and tried to cool down her fiery red cheeks with copious bathing in cold water. When Mrs. Clifford came back five minutes later, everything looked to the outer eye of a mere casual observer exactly as if Elma had laid in bed all night, curled up between the sheets, in the most orthodox fashion.
But all these elaborate preparations didn’t for one moment deceive the mother’s watchful glance, or the keen intuition shared by all the women of the Clifford family. She looked tenderly at Elma—Elma with her face half buried in the pillows, and the tell-tale flush still crimsoning her cheek in a single round spot; then she turned for a second to the clothes, too neatly folded on the chair by the bedside, as she murmured low—
“You’re not well this morning, my child. You’d better not get up. I’ll bring you a cup of tea and some toast myself. You don’t feel hungry, of course. Ah, no, I thought not. Just a slice of dry toast—yes, yes. I have been there. Some eau de Cologne on your forehead, dear? There, there, don’t cry, Elma. You’ll be better by-and-by. Stop in bed till lunch-time. I won’t let Lucy come up with the tea, of course. You’d rather be alone. You were tired last night. Don’t be afraid, my darling. It’ll soon pass off. There’s nothing on earth, nothing at all to be alarmed at.”
She laid her hand nervously on Elma’s arm. Half dead with shame as she was, Elma noticed it trembled. She noticed, too, that mamma seemed almost afraid to catch her eye. When their glance met for an instant the mother’s eyelids fell, and her cheek, too, burned bright red, almost as red, Elma felt, as her own that nestled hot so deep in the pillow. Neither said a word to the other of what she thought or felt. But their mute sympathy itself made them more shame-faced than ever. In some dim, indefinite, instinctive fashion, Elma knew her mother was vaguely aware what she had done last night. Her gaze fell half unconsciously on the bottom drawer. With quick insight, Mrs. Clifford’s eye followed her daughter’s. Then it fell as before. Elma looked up at her terrified, and burst into a sudden flood of tears. Her mother stooped down and caught her wildly in her arms. “Cry, cry, my darling,” ahe murmured, clasping her hard to her breast. “Cry, cry; it’ll do you good; there’s safety in crying. Nobody but I shall come near you to-day. Nobody else shall know! Don’t be afraid of me! Have not I been there, too? It’s nothing, nothing.”