The girl answered with an abrupt gesture of impatience.
“Ellen, I don’t understand. What is all this secrecy, this mystery for? I found your letter, I came to give it back to you and asked a simple question—and you treat me as though I had done something criminal. It’s foolish. I don’t see why I shouldn’t ask mother.”
A blank panic seemed to have seized Ellen. She snatched the girl’s hand and went on in the same hoarse voice:
“I can’t explain, but only don’t, don’t say anything to her. For her sake, for everybody’s sake, please!”
Moira experienced a momentary insane illumination. It made her heart stop and then flutter and then stop again. Twice in her life she had felt herself near death—once in an accident with her car, and once when her horse had thrown her. She felt now the same sensation she had felt then. The questions that came to her lips would have seemed to her idiotic a moment before. Yet they came irresistibly.
“Ellen,” she cried, “what does all this mean? Have I got anything to do with it?”
“You? Oh, no, no,” cried Ellen. “No, you mustn’t think that!”
“Was that baby me?”
“Oh, Miss Moira, how can you—how can you dream—?”
“Are you my mother, Ellen? Tell me the truth. I’ll never leave here until I hear the truth. I’ll search this room, every inch of it.”