“Yes, mamma,” she said, looking up with a rush of blood to her heart, feeling that the moment had come. But she would not have been Bee if she had not put a little something of her own into the thick of the crisis. “There were plenty of opportunities—we have been together all day.”
“You know what I mean,” said Mrs. Kingsward. “Bee, I saw you reading a letter this morning.”
“Yes, mamma.”
“Who was it from?”
Bee looked her mother in the face. “I have never made any secret of it,” she said. “I have read them openly before papa—I never would pretend they were anything different. Of course it was from Aubrey, mamma.”
“Oh, Bee!” said her mother. “You have never told me what your father said to you that morning. He told me that it was all over and done with—that he would never listen to another word on the subject.”
“That was what he told me.”
“Oh, Bee, Bee! and yet——”
“Stop a moment, mamma! He never said I was not to write; he never said there was to be no correspondence. Had he said so, I should have, at least, considered what it was best to do.”
“Considered what was best! But you were not the judge. I hope you would have obeyed your father, Bee.”