“I will look for it,” said Ursula, taking care not to disturb Plush, who always made a bed for herself in the very midst of the crackly confusion on the table. “Is this it?”
“No, indeed,” replied the Baroness, without glancing up to verify her verdict. “You don’t know, Ursula. You are a new-comer. Cook is right, though I told her some things are best left unsaid.”
She went on folding and sorting, muttering to herself with a quiet little lady-like laugh.
“Gerard is ridiculous,” she presently broke out, with angry energy. “He says he would have had to sell the place as well as you must now, so where’s the difference? He is a fool. He would not have had to sell it, no more than Otto. Did Otto want to sell it, Ursula?”
She sat back in her chair, glowering with her light blue eyes at her daughter-in-law.
“No,” said Ursula, bending low over the writing-table.
“Aha! I thought you would try to deceive me. I forget a good many things, but I remember this. Do you hear me, daughter-in-law? I have never loved you; I had little reason to.”
Her voice rose shrill with quavery passion; she tried to steady her feeble little frame with blue-veined hands on the massive arms of her chair.
“But what does Gerard mean when he says—what does he say?—I forget—he says I must be kind to you. What does he mean? I have always been kind to you. But what right had you—better have plain speaking—to come and steal away my house from my son? Eh?” She started to her feet; the dog, disturbed by her cry, sprang up, barking furiously. “What right?” she repeated. “It is Gerard’s—I told him so. I told him to come and take it away from you. He writes back, ‘No.’ He is a coward—a coward as they all are, for a woman’s face.”
She sank back, whispering the final sentences, and began to cry, with noiseless, unrestrained tears.