"You're awfully good to us. It's twenty years!—" Her voice failed her.
"Twenty years—yes, indeed! since I drove over to see you that time! Your daughter was a little toddling thing."
"We've had such a life—these last few years—oh, such an awful life! My old father's still alive—but would be better if he were dead. My mother depended on us entirely—she's dead. But I'll explain everything—everything."
It was clear, however, that till sleep had knit up the ravelled nerves of the poor lady, no coherent conversation was possible. Victoria hastened to depart.
"To-morrow you shall tell me all about yourself. My son will be home to-morrow. We will consult him and see what can be done."
Mother and daughter were left alone. Felicia rose feebly to go to her own room, which adjoined her mother's. She was wearing a dressing-gown of embroidered silk—pale blue, and shimmering—which Victoria's maid had wrapped her in, after the child's travelling clothes, thread-bare and mud-stained, had been taken off. The girl's tiny neck and wrists emerged from it, her little head, and her face from which weariness and distress had robbed all natural bloom. What she was wearing, or how she looked, she did not know and did not care. But her mother, in whom dress had been for years a passion never to be indulged, was suddenly—though all her exhaustion—enchanted with her daughter's appearance.
"Oh, Felicia, you look so nice!"
She took up the silk of the dressing-gown and passed it through her fingers covetously; then her tired eyes ran over the room, the white bed standing ready, the dressing-table with its silver ornaments and flowers, the chintz-covered sofas and chairs.
"Why shouldn't we be rich too?" she said angrily. "Your father is richer than the Tathams. It's a wicked, wicked shame!"
Felicia put her hand to her head.