“You don't,” gasped the girl. “What do you know? You—you were married when you were years younger than I am.” There was something violently accusing in her tone. She thrust her mother away and sat up in bed, and looked at her with fierce eyes blazing like lamps in her soft, flushed face.
“I know it,” said Mrs. Ayres. “I know it, and I know what you mean, Lucy; but there is something else which I know and you do not.”
“I'd like to know what!”
“How a mother reads the heart of her child.”
Lucy stared at her mother. Her face softened. Then it grew burning red and angrier. “You taunt me with that,” she said, in a whisper—“with that and everything.” She buried her face in her crushed pillow again and burst into long wails.
Mrs. Ayres smoothed her hair. “Lucy,” said she, “listen. I know what is going on within you as you don't know it yourself. I know the agony of it as you don't know it yourself.”
“I'd like to know how.”
“Because you are my child; because I can hardly sleep for thinking of you; because every one of my waking moments is filled with you. Lucy, because I am your mother and you are yourself. I am not taunting you. I understand.”
“You can't.”
“I do. I know just how you felt about that young man from the city who boarded at the hotel six years ago. I know how you felt about Tom Merrill, who called here a few times, and then stopped, and married a girl from Boston. I have known exactly how you have felt about all the others, and—I know about this last.” Her voice sank to a whisper.