Lily’s dark eyes grew thoughtful. “It would have been the same if I had married the Governor. People would have said that we loved each other as you and Cousin Charles love each other. They wouldn’t have known the truth. One doesn’t wash one’s dirty linen in public.”
Her cousin interrupted her abruptly. “It is not the same. I could not have had children by Charlie until I was married to him. I mean there could have been nothing like that between us beforehand.”
“That’s only because you were stronger than me,” said Lily. “You see I was born as I am. That much I could not help. There are times when I cannot save myself. You are more fortunate. Irene is like me. That is the reason she behaves as she does. After all, it is the same thing in us both.”
But Mrs. Tolliver, it was plain to be seen, understood none of this. It was quite beyond her simple code of conduct. Her life bore witness to her faith in the creed that breaking the rules meant disaster.
“I know,” continued Lily, “that I was lucky to have been rich. If I had been poor it would have been another matter. I should have married him. But because I was rich, I was free. I was independent to do as I wished, independent ... like a man, you understand. Free to do as I pleased.” All at once she leaned forward impulsively. “Tell me, Cousin Hattie ... it has not made me hard, has it? It has not made me old and evil? It has not made people dislike me?”
Mrs. Tolliver regarded her for a moment as if weighing arguments, seeking reasons, why Lily seemed content and happy despite everything. At length, finding no better retort, she said weakly, “How could they dislike you? No one ever knew anything about it.”
A look of triumph shone in Lily’s dark eyes. “Ah, that’s it!” she cried. “That’s it! They didn’t know anything, so they don’t dislike me. If they had known they would have found all sorts of disagreeable things in me. They would have said, ‘We cannot speak to Lily Shane. She is an immoral woman.’ They would have made me into a hard and unhappy creature. They would have created the traits which they believed I should possess. It is the knowing that counts and not the act itself. It is the old story. It is worse to be found out in a little sin than to commit secretly a big one. There is only one thing that puzzles them.” She raised her slim, soft hands in a little gesture of badinage. “Do you know what it is? They can’t understand why I have never married and why I am not old and rattly as a spinster should be. It puzzles them that I am young and fresh.”
For a time Mrs. Tolliver considered the dark implications of this speech. But she was not to be downed. “Just the same, I don’t approve, Lily,” she said. “I don’t want you to think for a minute that I approve. If my daughter had done it, it would have killed me. It’s not right. One day you will pay for it, in this world or the next.”
At this threat Lily grew serious once more and the smoldering light of rebellion came into her eyes. She was leaning back in her old indolent manner. It was true that there was about her something inexpressibly voluptuous and beautiful which alarmed her cousin. It was a dangerous, flaunting beauty, undoubtedly wicked to the Presbyterian eyes of Mrs. Tolliver. And she was young too. At that moment she might have been taken for a woman in her early twenties.
After a time she raised her head. “But I am happy,” she said, defiantly, “completely happy.”