Claire opened her mouth to protest and then closed it again. If this were the form of cross that she was to bear, it was peculiar, certainly; but why not bear it as well as any other? Of what use to explain again, what the son's own lips had told, that she had utterly refused the honor offered her—that she had never for a moment desired to be received into this family? If the bereaved mother had really succeeded in making herself believe such folly as this, why not let it pass—the grave had closed over the possibility of its ever being realized?
It was a strange part to play—to accept without outward protest the position of one who would have been a daughter of the house, to hear herself mentioned as Louis Ansted's intended wife; to ride, and walk, and talk with the mother, and help her make believe that she would not for the world have thwarted her son's desires; but Claire, after a few attempts at explanation, dropped the effort. The mother did not wish to believe the truth about this, or many other things, and therefore closed her eyes to them.
She wished also to impress herself and others with the belief that Louis had been in every respect an exemplary, and, indeed, a remarkable young man. She withdrew her connection with the church in town and united by letter with the one at South Plains; avowedly, because "dear Louis was interested in it more than in any other church in the world." She imagined plans that he might have had for the church, and called them his, and eagerly worked them out. She adopted the minister, and his wife and his children, because she had often heard Louis say that he would rather hear that man preach than to hear Doctor Archer; and once he told her that the minister's little girl had a very sweet face, and was a cunning little witch whom he liked to tease. She turned with something like disgust from the very name of VanMarter, protesting that "poor Louis had had a great deal to bear from their advances," and that she had no desire to cultivate their acquaintance further.
On all these strange changes in her mother Alice looked with bewilderment.
"She frightens me," she said to Claire one evening, "I don't know what to think. She contradicts every theory of life I ever heard her express. She attributes to Louis graces that he did not possess. She accuses people of injuring him, who really tried to help him, and she adopts as plans of his, things of which I know he had not even thought. I do not know my mother at all; and as I said, it frightens me. Is she losing her mind?"
Claire had no ready reply to these questionings, for she, too, was puzzled. But Mr. Chessney, as they walked slowly down from the house on the hill, discussing once more the strange change in the woman of the world, advanced a theory which Claire adopted, but which was hardly the one to explain to Alice.
"I think," said Mr. Chessney, "that she is hushing her conscience. It would like to speak loudly to her, and tell her that she is responsible for a ruined life, and she does not mean to listen to it. She is imagining a life she believes Louis might have lived, after the change that came to him on his sick-bed, and is making herself believe that he did live it, and that she was, and is, in hearty accord with it. It is a strange freak of the bewildering human mind, but unless I am mistaken, the woman will not find the peace in it that she is seeking. I think she will have to cry, 'God be merciful to me a sinner,' before her heart will find rest."
And then he added one sentence which set Claire's heart into a strange flutter: