“Tell you what?” Mrs. La Rue asked, and Margery replied.
“Tell me the whole truth, every word of it, as you did not tell it to Queenie.”
“What did I tell her?” Mrs. La Rue said, in a bewildered kind of way, as if the events of the last few hours were really a blank to her.
“You told her you were Christine Bodine, her former nurse,” Margery began, and her mother interrupted her with:
“And I am, Margery; that was the truth. I was Christine Marie La Mille Bodine; but I dropped the first name and the last, and for years was only Marie La Mille.”
“Yes, I know,” Margery returned. “You deceived me with regard to your name, and you kept your identity a secret from Reinette when you knew how much she wished to find you, and you gave her as a reason that you feared lest she would think less of me if she knew I was the child of one who had once served her mother.”
“Yes, that’s it—that’s it, Margie!” Mrs. La Rue gasped, as she clutched the skirt of Margery’s gown and rubbed it caressingly.
“Mother,” Margery said, and her voice was low and stern, “that excuse might do for Queenie, but not for me, who knows all our past life. There is something you are keeping from me, and which I must know. What is it? Why were you afraid to let Queenie know who you were?”
“There is nothing—nothing—believe me, Margie, nothing,” Mrs. La Rue said, still caressing the gown, as if she would thus appease her daughter, who continued:
“Yes, there is something; there has been a something always since I can remember. I see it now—your fits of abstraction, your moods of melancholy, amounting almost to insanity, and which have increased in frequency since we came to America and met Reinette. The money you received at stated times was from her father, was it not?”