Mab eyed her mother very curiously with a hundred questions on her lips: but Lady William’s face was not encouraging, and with a sigh the girl gave up her intended inquiry. She added, after some time: ‘The only thing, mother, is that Mrs. Swinford may want to speak to you of things that you don’t wish me to know.’
‘That is very possible, Mab: and it is for that I want you to go with me, to protect me. She would never bring up old stories which would be painful, before you.’
‘Mother,’ said Mab, and then paused.
‘What is it?’
‘I want to know—if I am perhaps at the mercy of a stranger like Mrs. Swinford to tell me things that would be painful—about my father—whether it would not be better for you, mother, who would do it in love and quietly, to tell me yourself and put me beyond her power?’
‘Mab, you are very sensible, very reasonable.’
‘I don’t know if I’m that: but it seems to me the better way.’
Lady William began to speak: then hesitated, became husky, and paused a moment to steady her voice. ‘There is nothing to tell about your father, Mab, that could affect you; nothing that would hurt his name in the world; only private matters between him and me, in which unfortunately Mrs. Swinford was mixed up. There is no such thing,’ she went on after a pause, with a sort of painful smile, ‘as trouble—without faults on both sides. I was to blame as much as any one else. You would not think the better of either of your parents if you were to be told all that there is to tell. Will you take my word for that? and that there is nothing which it is at all necessary for you to hear?’
‘Certainly, I will take your word, mother. But I don’t believe you were so much wrong. You are hasty sometimes, but you never keep on or nag. And sometimes you are so patient; if there were quarrels I know it was not your fault.’
The girl came to her mother’s side and gave her a kiss, putting down her soft young cheek upon Lady William’s, which was as soft, though no longer young. The mother took the kiss with a smile. It was not wholly a smile of pleasure at Mab’s approval and vindication of her—innocent Mab that knew of nothing but a quarrel, a difference of opinion, a nagging. Mab thought it was a great pity, that perhaps her father had troubles of temper which she was conscious herself of possessing, and that no doubt Mrs. Swinford had interfered and made things worse. It brought her father even a little nearer to her to learn that he had been cross. Poor father! he had been long forgiven and his tempers forgotten, when they were not thrust back upon the memory: and poor mother, who perhaps blamed herself more than was just, and thought now how often she might have answered with a soft word! Lady William smiled, reading in the child’s mind as in a book, so easy was that young interpretation, so desirable, so strange to the woman who knew all.