Mrs. Porter buried her pale, wrinkled face in her hands and leaned forward in her chair, her sharp elbows on her knees.
“I'm never going to get over this!” she groaned—“never—never; and you are my only child!”
“Mother!” Cynthia bent down and almost with anger drew the old woman's hand from her face. “Do you know what you are saying? Do you know that—that you may drive me from home with that insinuation?”
Mrs. Porter groaned. She got up stiffly, and, like a mechanical thing moved by springs, she caught her daughter's wrist and led her to a window, sternly staring at her from her great, sunken eyes. “Do you mean to tell me that you and that man sat together all the live-long night in that mill?”
“Mother, I was completely tired out. There was some fodder on the floor. I sat down on it, and after a long time I dropped asleep. He did too. He was near the door, and I—”
Mrs. Porter extended the stiff fingers of her hand and plucked a piece of fodder from Cynthia's hair, and held it sneeringly up to the light. “It's a pity you didn't have a comb and brush with you,” she said. “You'd have been supplied at a hotel. Your hair is all in a mess. I'm going to keep this little thing. Light as it is, it has knocked life and hope out of me.”
Cynthia looked at her steadily for a moment, and then turned from the room. “I'm not going to defend myself against such suspicions as you have,” she said from the door. “I know what I am, if you don't.”
“I reckon this whole county will know what you are before many days,” snarled Mrs. Porter. “Minnie Wade had somebody in her family with enough manhood in 'im to want to defend her honor, but you haven't. Your sleepy-headed old father—” The girl was gone. For several minutes the old woman stood quivering in the warm sunlight at the window, and then she stalked calmly through the dining-room and kitchen and out to the barn. One of the stable-doors was open, and she could see her husband inside.
“Nathan Porter!” she called out—“you come here. I've got something to tell you.”
“All right,” he answered. “I'll be thar in a minute. Dern yore lazy soul, hain't I give you enough corn to eat without you havin' to chaw up a brand-new trough? I'm a good mind to take this curry-comb an' bust yore old head with it!”