Mrs. Burnham stared at her guest with a look that was not simply bewildered, it was frightened. What could the woman mean!
"Who is Maybelle?" she spoke the words almost fiercely; but her bewildered guest kept her voice low and gentle.
"I must ask you to forgive me, dear Mrs. Burnham. I know that my words must seem very intrusive, perhaps unpardonable; but indeed I thought I was doing right, and it is for Maybelle's sake alone that I have ventured."
The repetition of that name seemed to irritate Mrs. Burnham. "Will you tell me who she is?" she asked imperiously.
"My friend, is it possible that you do not understand? or do you mean that it is your pleasure to ignore her? Of course you know that there was a child, a little daughter?"
"The daughter of the lady who afterward became your son's wife." Mamie Parker was growing indignant. However painful the subject might be to Erskine Burnham's mother, certainly the child was not to blame; nor could she, who was apparently the child's only friend, be quite beyond the line of toleration because she had ventured to try to awaken sympathy for her in the heart of a woman who certainly had reason to be interested in her story. Whatever had taken place to hurt them, surely the child ought not to suffer for it.
Mrs. Burnham struggled for composure. Even at that moment the thought uppermost in her mind was that she must shield her son; yes, and her son's wife, if possible. Something terrible had happened somewhere. A confusion of persons, probably, or—she could not think clearly, but there was something, some story, which she must ferret out to its foundation, and must at the same time hide from her son, unless—she would not complete that thought.
"You will forgive me I am sure for not being able to quite follow you." Her voice though cold and constrained was again self-controlled, and she even forced a smile.
"I think I must be unusually stupid this afternoon. There is some misunderstanding that I do not yet quite grasp. This—child? is she?—of whom you are speaking, she is not,—not alone in the world? Why does she especially need a friend?"