"How strange that you should be so good," I said dreamily, "when Sophie is so hateful, and Kilian is so trifling. I think your mother must have been a good woman."
I had never talked about Richard's mother before, never even thought whether he had had one or not, in my supreme and light-hearted selfishness. But the mind, at such a point as I was then, makes strange plunges out of its own orbit.
"And she died when you were little?"
"Yes, when I was scarcely twelve years old."
"A woman ought to be very good when it makes so much difference to her children. Richard, did my uncle ever tell you anything about my mother--what sort of a woman she was, and whether I am like her?"
"He never said a great deal to me about it," Richard answered, not looking at me as he talked. "He thinks you are like her, very strikingly, I believe."
"Think! I haven't even a scrap of a picture of her, and no one has ever talked to me about her. All I have are some old yellow letters to my father, written before I was born. I think she loved my father very much. The noise of these cars makes me feel so strangely. Can't we go into the one behind? I am sure it cannot be so bad."
"This is the best car on the train, Pauline. I know the noise is very bad, but try to bear it for a little while. We shall soon be there." And so on, through the weary journey.
At one station Richard got out, and I saw him speaking to several men. I believe he was hoping to find a doctor, for he was thoroughly frightened.
Before we reached the city I was past being frightened for myself, for I was suffering too much to think of what might be the result of my condition. When we left the cars, and Richard put me in a carriage, the motion of the carriage and its jarring over the stones were almost unendurable. Richard was too anxious now to say much to me. The expression of relief on his face as we reached Varick-street was unspeakable. He hurried up the steps and rang the bell, then came back for me, and half carried me up the steps.