"I ought to have come here before," said Aunt Hannah. "I ought to have come here immediately and explained to you that when I wrote that letter I hadn't the vaguest notion that you were already married. Do you think I'd have been such a fool if I'd known it, Jacqueline?"
Jacqueline lifted her troubled eyes: "I do not think you should have interfered at all."
"Good heavens! I know that! I knew it when I did it. It's the one hopelessly idiotic act of my life. Never, never was anything gained or anything altered by interfering where real love is. I knew it, child. It's an axiom—a perfectly self-evident proposition—an absolutely hopeless effort. But I chanced it. Your mother, if she were alive, would have chanced it. Don't blame me too much; be a little sorry for me. Because I loved you when I did it. And many, many of the most terrible mistakes in life are made because of love, Jacqueline. The mistakes of hate are fewer."
Aunt Hannah's folded hands tightened on the gun-metal reticule across her knees.
"It's too late to say I'm sorry," she said. "Besides, I'd do it again."
"What!"
"Yes, I would. So would your mother. I am sorry; but I would do it again! I love you enough to do it again—and—and suffer what I am suffering in consequence."
Jacqueline looked at her in angry bewilderment, and the spark in the little black eyes died out.
"Child," she said wearily, "we childless women who love are capable of the same self-sacrifice that mothers understand. I wrote you to save you, practically certain that I was giving you up by doing it—and that with every word of warning I was signing my own death warrant in your affections. But I couldn't sit still and let you go to the altar unwarned. Had I cared less for you, yes! I could have let you take your chances undisturbed by me. But—you took them anyway—took them before my warning could do anything except anger you. Otherwise, it would have hurt and angered you, too. I have no illusions; what I said would have availed nothing. Only—it was my duty to say it. I never was crazy about doing my duty. But I did it this time."