How could one fling into the simple innocence demanding knowledge, the bare, bold truth? But Ann Walden, driven at bay, worn, embittered and touched already by her doom, answered slowly:
"Your—father was—a bad man! that is why no one speaks of him; why his picture does not hang near your mother's."
"A bad man? What did he do, Aunt Ann?" A childish fear shook Cynthia's face. Bad, to her, was such a crude, primitive thing; "was he bad like—like the men here who drink and beat their women?"
"Worse than that!"
"Worse, Aunt Ann? Did he—beat my mother?'"
The horror, instead of calming Ann Walden, spurred her on.
"He—he killed her!"
"Killed her!" And with that Cynthia dropped beside her aunt and clung desperately to her hand, which lay idle in her lap. "Oh! is—is—he dead? Can he come to hurt us?"
Then Ann Walden laughed such a laugh as Cynthia had never heard before, but with which she was to become familiar.
"He's dead. He cannot hurt us any more. He did his worst—before you were born."