Mrs. Richie's vagueness was all gone. "Mr. Ferguson!"
"She was bad—all through."
"Oh, no!" Helena Richie said faintly.
"She left him, for another man. Just as the girl I believed in left me. I would have doubted my God, Mrs. Richie, before I could have doubted that girl. And when she jilted me, I suppose I did doubt Him for a while. At any rate, I doubted everybody else. I do still, more or less."
Mrs. Richie was silent.
"We two brothers—the same thing happened to both of us! It was worse for him than for me; I escaped, as you might say, and I learned a valuable lesson; I have never built on anybody. Life doesn't play the same trick on me twice. But Arthur was different. He was of softer stuff. You'd have liked my brother Arthur. Yes; he was too good to her—that was the trouble. If he had beaten her once or twice, I don't believe she would have behaved as she did. Imagine leaving a good husband, a devoted husband—"
"What I can't imagine," Helena Richie said, in a low voice, "is leaving a living child. That seems to me impossible."
"The man married her after Arthur—died," he went on; "I guess she paid the piper in her life with him! I hope she did. Oh, well; she's dead now; I mustn't talk about her. But Elizabeth has her blood in her; and she is pretty, just as she was. She looks like her, sometimes. There—now you know. Now you understand why I worry so about her. I used to wish she would die before she grew up. I tried to do my duty to her, but I hoped she would die. Yet she seems to be a good little thing. Yes, I'm pretty sure she is a good little thing. To-night, before we went to the dinner, she—she behaved very prettily. But if I saw her mother in her, I would—God knows what I would do! But except for this fussing about clothes, she seems all right. You know she wanted a locket once? But you think that is only natural to a girl? Not a vanity that I need to be anxious about? Her mother was vain—a shallow, selfish theatrical creature!" He looked at her with worried eyes. "I am dreadfully anxious, sometimes," he said simply.
"There's nothing to be anxious about," she said, in a smothered voice, "nothing at all."
"Of course I'm fond of her," he confessed, "but I am never sure of her."