“Yes, darling,” she said, “I know about it, mostly at least.”
She drew my head on to her knee, as I crept close to her where she sat on a low couch, and let me sob out all my misery. Oh, mamma, dear little, sweet, unselfish mother—was there, could there ever be any one so kind as you? And I, who had sometimes almost dared to look down on her for her very goodness! That afternoon brought me the end of the lesson I had begun to learn. It was quite dark, and growing late, before mamma rang for lights. I had cried my eyes into a dreadful state, and I was still shivering every now and then from a sort of nervousness. Mamma took me upstairs and made me go to bed.
“You will feel better in the morning,” she said. “And I will talk more to you. We must not exaggerate things, you know, dear. Good-night, my Connie, my own little Sweet Content.”
Was it not nice of her to call me that! I did not go to sleep for a good while. When I did I slept heavily. It was quite daylight when I woke. Mamma was standing beside me, and Prudence was setting down a tray with my breakfast.
“I will come back when you have finished, dear,” mamma said. She did not mention papa, and when I asked Prue she only said he was already out.
So he was. Not only out, but away. When mamma came up again she told me that he had got a letter the night before, which had decided him on going to London for two or three days—I think it was to attend some scientific meeting.
“He came up to look at you last night,” mamma went on, “but you did not wake.”
I did not speak for a minute or two. Then I said timidly:
“Mamma, do you think he will ever forgive me? Mamma, do you know that he could scarcely have seemed more terribly angry if—if—I had done it on purpose to hurt the Whytes, and you know it wasn’t that I love them too much; and even if I didn’t, I couldn’t be as bad as that?”