“There—there——” she said.
“Why have you never told me?”
“Would it have done you any good?”
“It would have made me much more thoughtful and considerate.”
“I’ve never wanted thought or consideration,” said Myra. “You have. So I say—would it have done you any good? Not a ha’p’orth. I’ve been much more use to you as I am. If you want to serve people, don’t go and throw your private life down their throats. It chokes them. You may think it won’t—but it does.”
“But why,” asked Olivia with moist eyes. “Why should you want to serve me like that—your devotion all these years?”
“My duty,” said Myra. “I told you something of the sort a while ago. What’s the good of repeating things? Besides, there was your mother——”
“Did mother know?”
Myra nodded. “She didn’t know I was going to be married. I was young then, and afraid. Madam took me out of an orphanage, and I thought I was bound for life. . . . He came to Medlow to do thatching. That’s how I met him. His father, one of a large family, had come from Norfolk to settle in the West. The Norfolk thatchers are known all over England. It goes down from father to son. His family had been thatchers in the same village since the Norman Conquest. He was a fine, upstanding man, and in his way an aristocrat—different from the butcher’s boys and baker’s men that came to the back door. I loved him with all my heart. He asked me to marry him. I said ‘Yes.’ We arranged it should be for my next holiday. Up to then, I had spent my holiday at a seaside place connected with the orphanage. One paid a trifle. Instead of going there, I went to his home. It was only when the trouble came that I wrote to your mother. She said the fewer people who knew, the better. I came back as though nothing had happened. Whether she told Mr. Gale or not, I don’t know. I don’t think she did. There was a baby—but, thank God, it was born dead. Your mother arranged it all, so that no one should be the wiser. You yourself were the tiniest tot. Perhaps now you see why I have a duty towards the daughter of an angel from Heaven.”
“And all my life——” Olivia began, but Myra interrupted her unemotionally.