Frances had not been accustomed to many demonstrations of affection, and this moved her almost beyond her power of self-control. She put down her head upon her father’s shoulder and cried, “Oh, if we could only go back a week! but we can’t; no, nor even half a day. Things that might have been this morning, can’t be now, papa! I was very, very angry—oh, in a rage—when I read these letters. Why did you keep them from me? Why did you keep my mother from me? I wrote and told her everything, and then I tore up my letter and told her nothing. But I can never be the same again,” said the girl, shaking her head with that conviction of the unchangeableness of a first trouble which is so strong in youth. “Now I know what it is to be one thing and appear another, and to bear blame and suffer for what you have not deserved.”
Waring repented his appeal to his child. He repented even the sudden impulse which had induced him to make it. He withdrew his arm from her with a sudden revulsion of feeling, and a recollection that Constance was not emotional, but a young woman of the world, who would understand many things which Frances did not understand. He withdrew his arm, and said somewhat coldly, “Show me what address you have put upon your mother’s letter. You must not make any mistake in that.”
Frances dried her eyes hastily, and felt the check. She put her letter before him without a word. It was addressed to Mrs Waring, no more.
“I thought so,” he said, with a laugh which sounded harsh to the excited girl; “and, to be sure, you had no means of knowing. I told you your mother was a much more important person than I. You will see the difference between wealth and poverty, as well as between a father’s sway and a mother’s, when you go to Eaton Square. This is your mother’s address.” He wrote it hastily on a piece of paper and pushed it towards her. Frances had received many shocks and surprises in the course of these days, but scarcely one which was more startling to her simple mind than this. The paper which her father gave her did not bear his name. It was addressed to Lady Markham, Eaton Square, London. Frances turned to him an astonished gaze. “That is where—mamma is living?” she said.
“That is—your mother’s name and address,” he answered, coldly. “I told you she was a greater personage than I.”
“But, papa——”
“You are not aware,” he said, “that, according to the beautiful arrangements of society, a woman who makes a second marriage below her is allowed to keep her first husband’s name. It is so, however. Lady Markham chose to avail herself of that privilege. That is all, I suppose? You can send your letter without any further reference to me.”
Frances went away without a word, treading softly, with a sort of suspense of life and thought. She could not tell how she felt or what it meant. She knew nothing about the arrangements of society. Did it mean something wrong, something that was impossible? Frances could not tell how that could be—that your father and mother should not only live apart, but have different names. A vague horror took possession of her mind. She went back to her room again, and stared at that strange piece of paper without knowing what to make of it. Lady Markham! It was not to that personage she had written her poor little simple letter. How could she say mother to a great lady, one who was not even of the same name? She was far too ignorant to know how little importance was to be attached to this. To Frances, a name was so much. She had never been taught anything but the primitive symbols, the innocently conventional alphabet of life. This new discovery filled her with a chill horror. She took her letter out of its envelope with the intention of destroying that too, and letting silence—that silence which had reigned over her life so long—fall again and for ever between her and the mother whose very name was not hers. But as this impulse swept over her, her eye caught one of the first of the little letters which had revealed this unknown woman to her. It was written in very large letters, such as a child might read, and in little words. “My darling, write to me; I long so for you.—Your loving Mother.” Her simple mind was swept by contending impulses, like strong winds carrying her now one way, now another. And unless it should be that unknown mother herself, there was nobody in the world to whom she could turn for counsel. Her heart revolted against Constance, and her father had been vexed, she could not tell how. She was incapable of betraying the secrets of the family to any one beyond its range. What was she to do?
And all this because the mother, the source of so much disturbance in her little life, was Lady Markham and not Mrs Waring! But this, to the ignorance and simplicity of Frances, was the most incomprehensible mystery of all.