"I see from your face that you've had more news," the old woman said, as she smiled in greeting. "Sit down and tell me about it. I'm on this job and want to get through with it before I put it down."
"I got a letter this morning," Virginia complied, "from a woman down there who said she was my mother's nurse. The operation was very successful, and she is doing remarkably well. The surgeon says she will have no more trouble with her affliction. It was only on the surface and was taken just in time."
"Ah, just in time!" Ann held the sheet in her tense hands for a moment, and then crushed it into her capacious lap. "Then she's all right."
"Yes, she is all right, Mrs. Boyd. In fact, the doctor says she will soon be able to come home. The simple treatment can be continued here under their directions till she is thoroughly restored."
There was silence. Ann's face looked as hard as stone. She seemed to be trying to conquer some rising emotion, for she coughed, cleared her throat, and swallowed. Her heavy brows were drawn together, and the muscles of her big neck stood up under her tanned skin like tent-cords drawn taut from pole to stake.
"I may as well tell you one particular thing and be done with it," she suddenly gulped. "I don't believe in deception of any sort whatever. I hate your mother as much as I could hate anything or anybody. I want it understood between us now on the spot that I done what I did for you, not for her. It may be Old Nick in me that makes me feel this way at such a time, but, you see, I understand her well enough to know she will come back primed and cocked for the old battle. The fear of death didn't alter her in her feelings towards me, and, now that she's on her feet, she will be worse than ever. It's purty tough to have to think that I put her in such good fighting trim, but I did it."
"I am afraid you are right about her future attitude," Virginia sighed, "and that was one reason I did not want help to come through you."
"That makes no odds now," Ann said, stoically. "What's done is done. I'm in the hands of two powers—good and evil—and here lately I never know, when I get out of bed in the morning, whether I'm going to feel the cool breath of one or the hot blast of the other. For months I had but one desire, and that was to see you, you poor, innocent child, breathing the fumes of the hell I sunk into; and just as my hopes were about to be realized the other power caught me up like a swollen river and swept me right the other way. Luke King really caused it. Child, since God made the world He never put among human beings a man with a finer soul. That poor, barefoot mountain boy that I picked up and sent off to school has come back—like Joseph that was dropped in a pit—a king among men. Under the lash of his inspired tongue I had to rise from my mire of hatred and do my duty. I might not have been strong enough in the right way if—if I hadn't loved him so much, and if he hadn't told me, poor boy, with tears in his eyes and voice, that you were the only woman in the world for him, and that his career would be wrecked if he lost you. I let him leave me without making promises. I was mad and miserable because I was about to be thwarted. But when he was gone I got to thinking it over, and finally I couldn't help myself, and acted. I determined, if possible, to pull you back from the brink you stood on and give you to him, that you might live the life that I missed."
Virginia sank into a chair. She was flushed from her white, rounded neck to the roots of her hair.
"Oh, I didn't deserve it!" she cried. "I have remained silent when my mother was heaping abuse upon you. I made no effort to do you justice when your enemies were crying you down. Oh, Mrs. Boyd, you are the best and most unselfish woman that ever lived."