The voice was not the same which Mrs. La Rue knew as Margery’s. There was a hardness and sternness in it which boded no good to her, and a mortal terror took possession of her as she thought:
“My hour has come. She will wring it from me. Well, no matter. It will be better for her, perhaps.”
“Say, mother, will you come down, or shall I come up?” came again from Margery, and this time Mrs. La Rue replied:
“Oh, Margery, Margery! not yet—not yet! Spare me a little longer. I have been so tried and worried. I am not quite right in my head; wait awhile before you come, dear Margery.”
There was a world of pathos in those two words—“dear Margery”—pathos and pleading both, as if the mother were asking mercy from her child. And Margery recognized the meaning, but her heart did not soften or relent. Indeed, she could not understand herself, or define the strange feeling which had taken possession of her and was urging her on to know what it was her mother had hidden so long and so successfully.
But she did not then go up; she waited awhile, and going to the kitchen, prepared a tempting dinner, which she arranged upon a tray, and then took to the room, where Mrs. La Rue still sat just as Reinette had left her, her face as white as marble, her eyes blood-shot and dim, and her whole attitude that of a guilty culprit awaiting its punishment.
And she was awaiting hers, and when the first blow came in the person of Margery bringing her the nicely-prepared dinner, she seemed to shrivel up in her chair, and her head dropped upon her breast. But she did not speak, and when Margery drew a little table to her side, and placing the tray upon it, poured out her tea and held it to her lips, she swallowed it mechanically, as she did the food pressed upon her. At last, however, she could take no more, and putting up her hand, she made a gesture of dissent, and whispered faintly:
“Enough!”
How sick and old, and crushed she looked! But for this Margery would not spare her; and when, after taking the dinner away, she returned to her mother, and sat down where Queenie had sat, she said:
“Now, tell me.”