“Why—why—because her face shows it,” stammered Nathalie, “and then, why she is your mother, and if I should talk to my mother like that, why—I should expect her to die then and there.”
“Why?” persisted the voice.
“Because it would hurt her so,—” Nathalie labored, she hated to preach—“to think I could be so disrespectful to her, and ill-bred.”
“Well, your mother isn’t my mother; your mother didn’t shut you up in a dark room so that you tried to get away.”
“Nita!” came in a pain-stricken voice, “don’t talk that way!”
Nathalie turned to see Mrs. Van Vorst standing in the doorway, her face drawn and lined. “I was coming in to ask—oh, Miss Page, will you come in here a moment? I should like to speak to you.”
Nathalie arose quickly, her heart overflowing with pity for this poor mother who was only too surely paying the penalty of neglect and anger. “Oh, Mrs. Van Vorst,” she cried hastily, “do not mind your daughter, she doesn’t mean to hurt you, she—I think she is just spoiled, you know.”
By this time Nathalie had followed Mrs. Van Vorst into the adjoining room, a sun-parlor, whose glass windows looked down upon a terraced garden, green with trees and gorgeous with multicolored flowers, surrounded by low rolling hillocks or mounds.
Nita, as Nathalie left the room, began to vent her displeasure in shrill, angry shrieks, but her mother, with set, rigid lips, closed the door softly, and then turning towards Nathalie began to speak, brokenly, between deep-drawn breaths.
“Oh, I have been foolish—I am afraid—in letting you come to see Nita, but oh, it is so hard for her, shut up in this house, with only me and the servants. So when the doctor was telling us about you, Nita pleaded so to have you come, and I foolishly yielded. But oh, Miss Page, do not, I beg of you, repeat what you have seen or heard, don’t mind what Nita says about me, it is not true; as you said she does not mean all she says.” The tears were rolling down Mrs. Van Vorst’s face.