Again Ellen was smitten by amazement at her mother’s ignorance of how much she knew, at how little the older woman understood of the shrewd knowledge she had hoarded away.
“I’m sorry you know it,” said Mrs. Tolliver. “It would have been just as well if you hadn’t known.” Again she nodded her head with that same air of reaching a secret decision. “But now that you know it, you might as well know some other things.... You’re old enough now, I guess.” She sat down on one of the stiff-backed chairs and beckoned to her daughter. “Come here,” she said, “and sit on my lap.... I’ll tell you other things.”
Ellen came to her and sat upon her lap, rather awkwardly, for to her it seemed a silly thing. She had not the faintest understanding of all that this small gesture meant to her mother. And secretly she hardened herself against a treacherous attack upon her affections. It was the habit of her mother to attack her through love. Always it had been a sure method of reducing Ellen’s fortress of secrecy and hardness.
“It’s about Lily,” began Mrs. Tolliver. “I know Lily is beautiful. She’s very kind and pleasant ... but there are things about her that aren’t nice. In some ways Lily is a loose woman.... She’s laid herself open to talk.... People smirch her good name.... Perhaps she isn’t really bad.... Nobody really knows anything against her, but she is free with men.... There’s been talk, Ellen, and when there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
Here Ellen interrupted her. “I don’t believe it.... I don’t believe any of it,” she exclaimed stubbornly. “It’s the way people talk. I know how they do.... I’ve heard.... It’s one reason why I hate the Town.”
And then Ellen saw her mother assume a great calmness, deliberately and with a certain ostentation, in order to impress Ellen with her sense of justice. It was like taking a cloak from a closet and putting it gravely about her. “I’ve never mentioned it to any one,” she said (never once guessing the thoughts in her daughter’s mind), “not to a soul.... Nothing could induce me to.... After all, Lily is my first cousin, the daughter of Aunt Julia, my own mother’s sister.... I wouldn’t permit any one to befoul her name in my presence.... But here we are alone, together, you and I.... It’s in the family. That makes a difference.... Sometimes, in the family, one has to face the facts. And the facts are that Lily hasn’t behaved well.... She’s lived in Paris for years, alone in the wickedest city in the world.... There’s even talk about her having had a baby ... and she’s never been married.... Nobody knows ... and Aunt Julia wouldn’t tell me.... You can’t get a word out of her.... You wouldn’t want to be like that, now would you?”
Ellen fell to pleating the folds of her cheap dress. Her dark brows drew closer together. She was sullen, awkward.
“I don’t see that it makes any difference ... not to Lily. She’s free.... She’s happy.”
“But she’s rich,” said her mother. “That’s why she’s free ... and only God knows whether she’s happy.... A woman like that can’t be happy.... I don’t want my daughter, my pure, lovely little daughter to be contaminated.”
The tide of Mrs. Tolliver’s emotions displayed all the signs of bursting the dam of her restraint. Ellen knew these signs. Her mother was beginning to drag in God. She was beginning to use words like “pure,” and “lovely.” And for the first time in her life, Ellen found herself instead of softening, growing harder and harder. Strangely enough, it was the words of the gentle, birdlike Miss Ogilvie which gave her a new power. This time, she was not to be defeated.