Mrs. Payton cowered as if her daughter had struck her: "Oh, how can you be so wicked!"
"Is it wicked to tell the truth?"
Mrs. Payton clasped and unclasped her hands: "I did my duty! But do you suppose I've been happy?" Her breath caught in a sob. "I've lived in hell all these years, just to make a home for you! I did my duty."
"I should have thought 'duty' would have made you leave him," Frederica said; "hell isn't a very good home for a child." She was triumphantly aware that she had said something smart; her mother's wincing face admitted it. "I suppose you were afraid to make a break while he was alive," she said, "but why not tell the truth now?"
Already the consciousness of self-betrayal had swept over Andy Payton's wife; her face flamed with anger. "You had no business to make me say a thing like that! You only tell the truth to hurt my feelings. You are just like Andrew!" She looked straight at her daughter, her eyes fierce with candor. "I love Mortimore best," she said, in a whisper.
For a single instant they stared at each other like two strangers. The mother was the first to come to herself. "I—I didn't mean that, Freddy. I love you both alike. But it was wicked to speak so of your father."
"I was a beast to hurt your feelings!" Frederica said; "and I don't in the least mind your loving Mortimore best. But what I said about Father is true; his being my father doesn't alter the fact that he was horrid. Mother, you know he was horrid! Don't let's pretend, at any rate to each other."
Her face twitched with eagerness to be understood; she tried to put her arm around her mother; but Mrs. Payton turned a rigid cheek to her lips; and instantly Fred lapsed back into contempt of unreality. The fact was, the deed was done. Each had told the other the truth. Mother and daughter had both seen the flash of the blade of fact as it cut pretense between them. Never again would Mrs. Payton's vanity over duty done dare to raise its head in her daughter's presence: Freddy knew that, so far as her married life went, duty had been cowardly acquiescence. Never again would Frederica be able to fling at her mother her superior morality: Mrs. Payton knew she was cruel, knew she was "just like her father."... Like Andy Payton! She ground her teeth with disgust, but she could not deny it. She was so truthful that she saw the Truth; saw her father's intelligence in her own clear mind; his ability in hers; his meanness in her ruthless smartness in proving a point. She hated him for these things—but she hated herself more.
Mrs. Payton told Arthur Weston of this revealing scene; but her confession confined itself to her remorse for having said she loved one child more than the other. "Of course I love them just exactly the same, but Freddy was wicked to speak disrespectfully of her father."
Then Frederica poured her contrition into his pitying ears.