She stopped as if something had suddenly given way, and on her knees her face was hidden in Miss Gibbie's lap.
Only the crackling of the coal in the grate broke the stillness of the room. Presently Miss Gibbie spoke, lifted the white, drawn face to hers.
"I do not know what it means to be alone in life? It is about all of life I do know!" Out of her voice she struggled to keep bitterness, made effort to laugh. "And do you suppose I would let Honoria Brockenborough scatter her righteous assertions a minute longer than they were heard? Puss Jenkins left me at four o'clock. An hour later I was back home." She opened her beaded bag. "There is your piece of paper!" She shook it in the air. "Honoria Brockenborough is now in bed with an attack of nervous collapse. I hope it will keep her there some time. Matoaca hasn't stopped crying since the guild meeting this morning, and for the first time in her life has bitterly reproached her Sister Superior who felt it her Christian duty to repeat what she now says she understood a hope-inflated, love-mad, half-tight fool had said. Queer old place, Mary, this big world! Queer little place this old Yorkburg! Not one person in forty thousand can repeat a statement what repeated can be very differently constructed. I thought it was as well Honoria Brockenborough should have a few remarks made to her. She's had them. The doctor is, doubtless, with her now. Do you want this paper?"
Mary Cary took the paper held toward her. As she read it the color came back slowly in her face, and the short, shivering breath grew quiet again.
"Yes," she said, "I want it." With a sob she leaned toward the older woman. "I told you I was all—alone. And already you—Miss Gibbie! Miss Gibbie!"
In each other's arms they clung as mother and child.
Chapter XXV
THE CONCLUSION OF A MATTER
You say, then, you did not make the statements the lady credits you with? You will take oath to that?"
"Of course I will." Horatio Fielding's shifty brown eyes looked for a moment into John Maxwell's relentless gray ones, then dropped uneasily. "What in the devil is all this about, anyhow? You come in on a fellow with some damned gossip a lot of old cats have been telling in their sewing society and accuse him of it before he knows what you're talking about. I don't even know what you're getting at."