Her daughter, taking the legal-looking documents in her suddenly cold hands, sank rather than seated herself upon a chair, for the humiliating reason that she felt unable to stand.
There was stillness for a while in the tiny room, which, like the drawing-room downstairs, was a bower of luxury. Carpet, curtains, furniture, plenishings—all were costly relics of bygone days, something to make a pillow between the dainty head of its mistress and the hard cold boards of poverty. Even as she cleaned the silver toilet articles yesterday, Virgie had noted a fresh bottle of a particularly expensive perfume affected by her mother.
Now she read the letters—read the family doom.
All gone! Everything! Lissendean!...
She put her hands to her head. She must think.
What was left?
Nothing! They were paupers. Tony must leave school and begin to be an errand boy. She, Virginia, must go into service. Pansy must be got into a home for cripples! Her mother?...
... And she had gone without the necessities of life to keep up those payments, while Mrs. Mynors was squandering the money on petty luxuries!
For the moment passion surged up so strongly in Virginia that she had to clench her hands and grind her teeth, while she shook with the effort to refrain from telling the pretty, golden-haired doll once for all what she thought of her. This mother, whom she had loved, whom dad had loved! Almost his last words had been a plea to his daughter not to let her mother suffer if she could help it.
Had she not done her best? What more could have been required of her that she had not given? She had sacrificed her whole life to the service of her loved ones, had drudged and toiled that her mother might have ease, had listened to her grumbling complaints, had humoured her wilfulness. Yet all had been in vain. In vain!