Grace seized her chance to meet the worst. “Do you think that I have done anything to encourage Mr. Libby?” she asked, looking bravely at her mother.
“Encourage him to do what?” asked Mrs. Breen, without lifting her eyes from her work.
“Encouraged him to—think I cared for him; to—to be in love with me.”
Mrs. Breen lifted her head now, and pushed her spectacles up on her forehead, while she regarded her daughter in silence. “Has he been making love to you?”
“Yes.”
Her mother pushed her spectacles down again; and, turning the seam which she had been sewing, flattened it with her thumb-nail. She made this action expressive of having foreseen such a result, and of having struggled against it, neglected and alone. “Very well, then. I hope you accepted him?” she asked quietly.
“Mother!”
“Why not? You must like him,” she continued in the same tone. “You have been with him every moment the last week that you haven’t been with Mrs. Maynard. At least I’ve seen nothing of you, except when you came to tell me you were going to walk or to drive with him. You seem to have asked him to take you most of the time.”
“How can you say such a thing, mother?” cried the girl.
“Didn’t you ask him to let you go with him this afternoon? You told me you did.”