"Alice!" the other exclaimed, with dismay, "don't you think of your father at all? And—for your mother's sake."
Alice was silent; then, in a hard voice, "I don't like her."
"Oh!" Rebecca cried, and shivered. There was a pause; then she said, faintly, "For your own sake?"
Alice looked up sullenly. "Nobody need know; we would only say it had been left to—her. Nobody would know."
Suddenly, as she spoke, despite the plain face and the red hair, Alice looked like her mother. Rebecca stepped back with a sort of shock. Alice, crying a little, got up and began to pull down her hair and braid it, with unsteady fingers. Her step-mother watched her silently; then she turned to go away; then came back swiftly, the tears running down her face.
"Oh, Alice, it is my fault! I've had you twenty-two years, and yet you are like— See, Alice, child; give her a chance to be kind to him, in you. Oh, I—I don't know how to say it; I mean, let her have a chance! Oh—don't you see what I mean? She said she was sorry!" All the harshness had melted out of Rebecca's face; she was nothing but gentleness, the tears falling down her cheeks, her voice broken with love. "Alice, be good, dear. Be good. Be good. And I—I will be pleasanter, Alice; I'll try, indeed; I'll try—"
VI
"Well," said Mr. Amos Hughes, a week later, in the cool dusk of Dr. Lavendar's study, just before tea, "this is a most extraordinary situation, sir!"
"Will ye have a pipe?" said Dr. Lavendar, hospitably.