“It’s all so funny,” laughed Helen of Troy, “so ghastly, ridiculously, agonizingly funny, and he might be your own son or mine, my dear--only we haven’t any!”
“We haven’t any,” repeated Edith. “Now, Helen, give me your hand. See, it’s very cold--and now your other hand! The years have made no difference--nothing has made any difference. You should have come to see me. When did you first know I was his step-mother?”
Helen had found her self-control again; she leaned back on the sofa-cushion with yielded hands and half-shut eyes, gazing at her companion.
“Oh, not till Miss Lestrange came. I wasn’t going to marry him, or give him another thought, you know; I was going to laugh him off gently, and then she let out suddenly about you--and I saw!”
“What did you see?” asked Edith almost sternly.
“I saw your life,” said Helen of Troy, opening her eyes and fixing them on her companion’s face. “I saw your life, Edith, and I see it now.”
“I don’t think you do,” said Edith calmly, “because you have not acted as if you did. Do you suppose I want to wreck the boy’s career?”
“He’ll wreck his own career,” said Helen scornfully. “One rock or another, or else some one must wrap him in cotton-wool. He’s a spoilt peach--just that soft, little rotten spot a woman sees at once. I don’t feel guilty. Of course, I saw what the she-cat had done--cut him adrift from you, and made your marriage a divided thing. I remembered everything you thought about love and marriage, and I guessed quickly enough you’d had your heart caught between two stones, and were having it crushed out of you. I thought if I used the boy he’d heal it all in three years. You only wanted your little chance, my dear, to make him love you from the bottom of his shallow little soul, and if your husband saw that, why, I suppose, even he would be convinced that things weren’t your fault.”
“How do you know he thinks things are my fault now?” asked Edith quickly.
“Have you ever known a man who didn’t hold the woman who loves him personally responsible for all the rubs of life?” asked Helen dryly.