As she came to think it over, she felt that she herself blamed her father bitterly, that he had fallen from the pedestal on which to her he had stood all her life. Yet the thought that others should be conscious of this degradation was terrible to her. When Constance spoke lightly of him, it was intolerable to Frances; and the mother of whom she knew nothing, of whom she knew only that she was her mother, a woman who had grievances of her own against him, who would be perhaps pleased, almost pleased, to have proof that he had done this wrong! Frances paused, with the fervour of indignation still in her heart, to consider how she should bear it if this were so. It was all selfish, she said to herself, growing more miserable as she fought with the conviction that whether in condemning him or covering what he had done, herself was her first thought. She had to choose now between vindicating herself at his cost, or suffering continued misconception to screen him. Which should she do? Slowly she folded up the letter she had written and put it away, not destroying but saving it, as leaving it still possible to carry out her first intention. Then she wrote another shorter, half-fictitious letter, in which the bitterness in her heart seemed to take the form of reproach, and her consent to obey her mother’s call was forced and sullen. But this letter was no sooner written than it was torn to pieces. What was she to do? She ended, after much thought, by destroying also her first letter, and writing as follows:—
“Dear Mother,—To see my sister and to hear that you want me, is very bewildering and astonishing to me. I am very ready to come, if, indeed, you will forgive me all that you must think so bad in me, and let me try as well as I can to please you. Indeed I desire to do so with all my heart. I have understood very little, and I have been thoughtless, and, you will think, without any natural affection; but this is because I was so ignorant, and had nobody to tell me. Forgive me, dear mamma. I do not feel as if I dare write to you now and call you by that name. As soon as we can consider and see how it is best for me to travel, I will come. I am not clever and beautiful, like Constance; but indeed I do wish to please you with all my heart.
“Frances.”
This was all she could say. She put it up in an envelope, feeling confused with her long thinking, and with all the elements of change that were about her, and took it back to the bookroom to ask for the address. She had felt that she could not approach her father with composure or speak to him of ordinary matters; but it made a little formal bridge, as it were, from one kind of intercourse to another, to ask him for that address.
“Will you please tell me where mamma lives?” she said.
Waring turned round quickly to look at her. “So you have written already?”
“O papa, can you say ‘already’? What kind of creature must she think I am, never to have sent a word all these years?”
He paused a moment and then said, “You have told her, I suppose?”
“I have told her nothing except that I am ready to come whenever we can arrange how I am to travel. Papa,” she said, with one of those sudden relentings which come in the way of our sternest displeasure with those we love—“O papa,” laying her hand on his arm, “why did you do it? I am obliged to let her think that I have been without a heart all my life—for I cannot bear it when any one blames you.”
“Frances,” he said, with a response equally sudden, putting his arm round her, “what will my life be without you? I have always trusted in you, depended on you without knowing it. Let Constance go back to her, and stay you with me.”