"Somewhere, in a nice place, my girl is now growing up like her
mother. Clean of everything I was and I knew. She must be practically
a woman now. I don't know where she is--there's now no way for me to
learn. And I don't want to know. And I don't want her ever to know
about me. I don't ever want to be the cause of making her feel
disgraced, or of dragging her down from among the people where she
belongs."
The Duchess gave no visible sign of emotion, but her ancient heart-
strings were set vibrating by that tense, low-pitched voice. She had a
momentary impulse to tell him the truth. But just then the Duchess was
a confusion of many conflicting impulses, and the balance of their
strength was for the moment against telling. So she said nothing.
Their talk drifted back to commonplaces, and presently Joe Ellison
went away. The Duchess sat motionless at her desk, again thinking--
thinking--thinking; and when Joe Ellison was back in his gardener's
cottage at Cedar Crest and was happily asleep, she still sat where he
had left her. During her generations of looking upon life from the
inside, she had seen the truth of many strange situations of which the
world had learned only the wildest rumors or the most respectable
versions; but during the long night hours, perhaps because the affair
touched her so closely, this seemed to her the strangest situation she
had ever known.
Pages:
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227