He hesitated over the simple words, his face flushing painfully. Ruth hurried her speech to save him further effort.
"Do you remember, Erskine, when our old acquaintance Mamie Parker called upon me? It was then that I heard the story."
He made a gesture of astonishment.
"Mamie Parker! Is it possible that she is mixed up in our family matters?"
"She found the little girl without other care than a father could give, and interested herself in her, and loved her. She has been thus far in the child's life as dear and wise a friend as a girl could have."
Then she began at the beginning and gave in minutest detail the whole story, as it had come to her at first, and as she had since lived it with Maybelle.
Erskine's amazement at the discovery that the young girl to whom his mother had been summoned by telegram, and for whom she had cared ever since, was the one whose life-story he was now hearing, was only equalled by his pain in it all. But after the first dismayed exclamation he sat like a statue, his face partially hidden by his hand, interrupting neither by question nor comment.
Ruth purposely made her story long that he might have time to get the control of himself; and she tried to make Maybelle's loveliness of heart and mind and person glow before him; under the spell of the thought that it would all be less terrible to him, if he could realize that his dead wife's strange conduct had not ruined the young life.