She was standing thus when Mrs. Scudder entered the room to see if her daughter had yet retired.
‘What are you doing there, Mary?’ she said, as her eye fell on the letter. ‘What is it you are reading?’
Mary felt herself grow pale: it was the first time in her whole life that her mother had asked her a question that she was not from the heart ready to answer. Her loyalty to her only parent had gone on even-handed with that she gave to her God; she felt, somehow, that the revelations of that afternoon had opened a gulf between them, and the consciousness overpowered her.
Mrs. Scudder was astonished at her evident embarrassment, her trembling, and paleness. She was a woman of prompt, imperative temperament, and the slightest hesitation in rendering to her a full, outspoken confidence had never before occurred in their intercourse. Her child was the core of her heart, the apple of her eye, and intense love is always near neighbour to anger; there was therefore an involuntary flash from her eye and a heightening of her colour, as she said,—‘Mary, are you concealing anything from your mother?’
In that moment Mary had grown calm again. The wonted serene, balanced nature had found its habitual poise, and she looked up innocently, though with tears in her large blue eyes, and said,—‘No, mother,—I have nothing that I do not mean to tell you fully. This letter came from James Marvyn; he came here to see me this afternoon.’
‘Here?—when? I did not see him.’
‘After dinner. I was sitting here in the window, and suddenly he came up behind me through the orchard-path.’
Mrs. Katy sat down with a flushed cheek and a discomposed air; but Mary seemed actually to bear her down by the candid clearness of the large blue eye which she turned on her as she stood perfectly collected, with her deadly-pale face and a brilliant spot burning on each cheek.
‘James came to say good-bye. He complained that he had not had a chance to see me alone since he came home.’
‘And what should he want to see you alone for?’ said Mrs. Scudder, in a dry, disturbed tone.