She said, ‘Yes, I heard,’ almost under her breath.
‘And why were you not here to meet him? I don’t suppose it was your fault. It could not be your fault. But why, why were you not here? It is like a bad fate.’
‘It would be rather a providence,’ said Joyce, in her subdued voice—‘for it’s better; oh, it’s better not. I am—glad—I wasn’t here.’
Mrs. Hayward grasped her hand with an impatient exasperation. ‘Glad—you weren’t here—glad to have driven him almost frantic—and me too!’
Joyce looked at her step-mother, wondering. She was so forlorn that any sympathetic tone, even though it was angry, caught her ear. And she felt the circumstances to be so desperate that she was no longer afraid. ‘You?—are you caring—anyway?’
‘Am I caring! You mean, do I care? Yes, I care. Joyce!’ cried Mrs. Hayward, gripping her hands tightly, then losing them with a little impatient gesture, as if she had flung them away, ‘you are a strange girl—you have never tried to make me love you. And I don’t know that I do. It was a great change to me, that had been everything to my husband, to have you a stranger brought in: and you never tried to make me care——’
‘I was bewildered,’ the girl said. ‘I was—like a creature astray——’
‘Very likely. I am not asking the cause; I am only telling you. But now there’s something got up that we must stand against. They’ve got to know about that man—and that you were only—a poor girl before. They are making a stand against you.’
Joyce stood up against the glow of the fire listening, yet only half roused. She was taller than Mrs. Hayward, and the energetic, almost impassioned little woman looked up at her pale face, and thought it like a face in a dream. It was abstracted, the eyes veiled, as if they were looking inward. And neither to have thus lost her lover’s visit, nor to be threatened with a conspiracy against her, awakened her out of the mist of her own thoughts. Mrs. Hayward put her hand on Joyce’s arm with the quick impatience of her nature— ‘Wake up,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you have in your mind: but give your attention to what I am saying. Wake up! it is of the greatest importance, if not to yourself, to your father and to me——’
‘Yes,’ said Joyce, with a little start; ‘I am hearing every word you say, and minding. Oh, don’t think I’ve a cold heart. I am only just all astray—since ever I came. I was a stranger, as you say. And I might learn better—if there was time.’