She would not be ill, she told him, and she really could not get up now and unlock the door.
She knew that he went away with an anxious heart, and that he came on tiptoe several times during the night and listened; and she hated herself for her apparent selfishness. But she could not let him in, she was not ready yet for the questions he would be sure to ask. She had not been able to plan how to make known to him her terrible secret.
CHAPTER XVIII
JUSTICE OR MERCY?
It was just as the silver-tongued clock on her mantel was tolling one, that the suggestion was suddenly made to Ruth Erskine Burnham that she was planning wickedness. Instead of trying to arrange how to break the dreadful news to Erskine, ought she not to be planning how to avoid having him know anything about it? Two very unreconcilable statements were in her mind clamoring to be heard.
"Of course she must tell him!" "No, she must not tell him!" "He ought to be told!" "He ought not to be told!" These in varying forms repeated themselves in her brain until she was bewildered. And the contradictory argument continued:—
"That girl, that forsaken, disowned girl—justice to her demanded the telling." "Justice did no such thing!" "But Irene was her mother, and had duties toward her that could not be ignored." "Irene was her mother only in name; there was no sense in which she could, even though she wished to do so, take the place of mother to her now." "Do not you know," continued that other voice speaking to the stricken woman, "do not you feel sure that for a young girl to be brought under the direction and daily influence of such a woman as Irene, would be almost the worst fate that could befall her?" "But Erskine has a duty toward her; he ought—" "Erskine cannot! you know he cannot. Have you not daily proof of the limit of his influence over Irene? Do you not know to your grief that in some matters she dominates him?"
"But Erskine ought to know the kind of woman that he is harboring. It is horrible to have him go on loving and trusting her!"