“I don’t blame you,” he answered, gently. “But you mustn’t take all this too hard, Gay. There’s nothing—disgraceful about it, after all. Your mother had typhoid fever, and it left her—like this. She doesn’t suffer—indeed, poor Aunt Flora suffers much, much more than she does! Aunt Flora’s just been telling me that Aunt Lily is usually perfectly serene and happy, wanders in the garden, loves the flowers——”
Balm was creeping into the girl’s heart with every word he said, and David saw, with a deep relief in his heart, that he was making an impression.
“Finish your chocolate,” he pleaded. And smiling over the brink of her cup with wearied eyes, Gay obediently picked it up and drank it to the dregs.
“It seems that Aunt Lily has been restless since you came home,” David added. “They never really know how much she understands or how she learns things. But she knew that you were here and she has been wild to see you. Being winter, she had been indoors most of the time, and since Christmas, Aunt Flora says, she has been unusually restless. That’s really the whole explanation—and that isn’t so terrible, is it?” he finished, with a smile.
Gabrielle looked at him soberly.
“I would like to see her again,” she said, slowly.
“Well, by all means!” he answered, cheerfully. “I hear from Margret that she seems to have a heavy cold and she’s in bed. But you can go up there—talk to her——”
“My mother, David——” the girl faltered. And the eyes she turned from his were brimming again. “It’s so different—from what most girls think—when they say ‘Mother!’” she managed to say.
“I know,” David said, quickly, with infinite pity in his voice, “I know, Gay. It’s very hard, dear.”
“What I realize now,” Gay began again, after a brief silence, and in a voice she resolutely held steady, “what has come to me—suddenly!—is that my name really is Fleming, that there was never any marriage at all—between my mother and Charpentier.”