"Mrs. Langdon," she said in a low voice, "I done nothing wrong."
"Oh, Nettie! Don't deny it, dear. I can see for myself. Sit beside me, dear. I am not condemning you. I only want your confidence. Tell me all about it, Nettie."
"I can't tell you, Mrs. Langdon! I can't. It's something can never be told you."
Nettie was past that stage where tears would have relieved her. All of her senses seemed numbed and hardened, but she clung persistently to the one passionate purpose, to hide the truth, at all costs, from Mrs. Langdon.
Of all who had known Bull Langdon, his wife alone, despite her cruel experiences with him over the years, did not hate him. To her, he was an erring child, who had started on the wrong trail, and went, misguided and blind, stumbling on in the darkness, never finding his way to that peaceful haven of thought that had been his wife's comfort and refuge. Incapable of evil herself, she had the child's simple faith in the goodness of others, or in their ultimate regeneration from wrong, or error, as she preferred to call it. She never wavered in her faith that sooner or later her "lost lamb" would return to the fold.
It was probable that only her strange faith in the Bull had kept him from doing her physical harm. Harsh and gruff and neglectful, he had never been actually cruel to her, and to himself he liked to boast defiantly that he had "never raised his hand" to his wife.
Now, as she begged for Nettie's confidence, she never dreamed of connecting her husband with the girl's trouble; that was a crime she never could have suspected.
"Do you realize, Nettie, what is about to happen to you?"
"I expect you'll want to turn me out now," said Nettie dully, and then turning swiftly, she added with sudden force: "But don't do it till the spring, Mrs. Langdon, because you ain't strong enough to do the work this winter, and it's nothing to me, and I want to stay and take care of you."
"Don't you know me better than that? Turn your face around, Nettie. Do you think I'm the kind of woman to turn a girl out because she is going to be what I have all my life longed to be—a mother?"