Miss Parker's bewildered look returned; they were not getting on. She hesitated a moment, then said firmly:—
"Her father is still living, Mrs. Burnham, but he is seriously ill, and she will soon be quite alone. At the best, the father, as you probably know, is not the kind of friend that one would choose for a young girl, though he has tried to be good to her, in his way."
Mrs. Burnham suddenly leaned forward and grasped the arm of her caller, and spoke with more vehemence than before, though this time her voice was low.
"What do you mean?" she said. "Isn't it possible for you to speak plainly? How should I know what you are talking about? Her 'father'! Whose father? Who is she? What is she? And what are either of them to me? I do not understand in the least."
"Mrs. Burnham," said Mamie Parker, sitting erect, with a bright spot of color burning on either cheek, "do you mean me to understand that you are ignorant of the fact that your son married a woman who was divorced from her first husband in less than three years after her marriage, and left with him a little child not six months old, who is now a young woman?"
It was well for Ruth Burnham that she could do just what she did at that moment, although it was for her an unprecedented thing. Every vestige of self-control gave way; she covered her face with her hands and broke into a perfect passion of weeping. Not the slow quiet weeping natural to a woman of her years, but a tempestuous outburst that shook her whole frame with its force.
The distressed witness of this misery sat for a moment irresolute, then she came softly to Mrs. Burnham's side and touched the bowed head with a gentle, caressing movement such as one might give to a little child, and spoke low and tenderly.
"Dear friend, forgive me; I am so sorry! I did not for a moment imagine that I was telling you anything that you did not already know. I felt my rudeness in coming to you with matters about which I was supposed to know nothing, but I thought you had, perhaps, been misinformed, and that if you could once understand, poor Maybelle would—"
Then she stopped. There seemed nothing that she could say, while that bowed form was shaken with emotion.
It passed in a few minutes. The woman who was accustomed to exercising self-control could not long be under the dominion of her emotions. She raised her head and spoke quietly.