"When you might have been with your children. Are you sure, Cathy"—she paused—"sure that you aren't losing the best of your life?"
"But I'm not!" Catherine sat erect in her chair, her cheeks flushed. "On the contrary, I am with the children, and love it, and they enjoy me far more than when I was their constant bodyguard."
"Charles was telling me about Spencer." Mrs. Spencer drew the gray silk of her skirt into tiny folds. "It seemed pitiful."
Catherine was silent a moment, fighting against the swift recurrence of that frightful hour, and against a wrathful sense of injustice.
"Children run away, often," she said. "I think Spencer just happened to catch at that excuse—of my not being here."
Mrs. Spencer shook her head.
"Charles seemed to feel——"
"He told me just how he felt." Catherine flung up her head.
Mrs. Spencer's inspection of her daughter was reflective.