Yet this I must record, that Mr. Giddens came back that night and stood once again beneath the swinging lanterns that cast their fitful light on mother's face and mine. And he asked for another dance—but it was not from mother. And whenever we swirled before her as we compassed the great piazza, I could see how mother's eyes followed us approvingly, more approving than I had ever known them to be before.
And thus it all began—all that never should have been begun at all. That is what I meant when I said, a little farther back, that I was pushed into love—and by my own dear mother. Oh, it all seems so terrible, so cruel to me now, looking back over all the happy years, beautiful in the uncreated light of love—it is really awful to reflect how often the hands that love her most are the fateful hands to many a girlish life, pushing the poor protesting heart, so gently, yet so relentlessly, pressing it on, on to the dark abyss of a loveless union. Mr. Giddens was of gentle birth, I know; he was handsome, cultured, charming,—and he was very rich. All these shed their light about him, and my mother gloried in their radiance. Their light, I said—but it was artificial. The summer sun of love had never shined on me at all; so that while I could not but feel the effulgence of it all, yet only one room of my life was lighted, and that the hallway—the vast world within was still wrapt in darkness. I knew all the time that I did not really love Mr. Giddens. Yet I could not see why I should not—and there the great peril lay. It was that fatal path that misled me. All the outward sign-posts pointed my way as leading towards his own—but these sign-posts were marked by human hands alone, and my mother never tired of spelling out their message.
"There's not a girl in Virginia," she said one day, "but would give her head for him. He's aristocratic, and handsome, and rich."
"And the greatest of these is rich," quoth I.
"For shame!" cried my patrician mother, "that's the least of it."
"Not at all," I retorted. "For if a girl doesn't love a man as fiercely as——"
"As what!" exclaimed my mother, shocked.
"As devotedly as she should," I revised, "she won't get much comfort out of his blue blood—and she can't do much with his beauty—but his cash is a different matter," I affirmed; "she could get her little hands on that all right."
"Helen, you're a foolish child," said my mother gravely.
"That's what I often think myself," said I, more gravely still.