When she was not eating her meals or asleep in her bed, absolute silence on Mrs. Presty’s part was a circumstance without precedent in the experience of her daughter. Mrs. Presty was absolutely silent now. Mrs. Linley looked up.
She at once perceived the change in her mother’s face and asked what it meant. “Mamma, you look as if something had frightened you. Is it anything in that letter?” She bent over the table, and looked a little closer at the letter. Mrs. Presty had turned it so that the address was underneath; and the closed envelope was visible still intact. “Why don’t you open it?” Mrs. Linley asked.
Mrs. Presty made a strange reply. “I am thinking of throwing it into the fire.”
“My letter?”
“Yes; your letter.”
“Let me look at it first.”
“You had better not look at it, Catherine.”
Naturally enough, Mrs. Linley remonstrated. “Surely I ought to read a letter forwarded by my lawyer. Why are you hiding the address from me? Is it from some person whose handwriting we both know?” She looked again at her silent mother — reflected — and guessed the truth. “Give it to me directly,” she said; “my husband has written to me.”
Mrs. Presty’s heavy eyebrows gathered into a frown. “Is it possible,” she asked sternly, “that you are still fond enough of that man to care about what he writes to you?” Mrs. Linley held out her hand for the letter. Her wise mother found it desirable to try persuasion next. “If you really won’t give way, my dear, humor me for once. Will you let me read it to you?”
“Yes — if you promise to read every word of it.”
Mrs. Presty promised (with a mental reservation), and opened the letter.
At the two first words, she stopped and began to clean her spectacles. Had her own eyes deceived her? Or had Herbert Linley actually addressed her daughter — after having been guilty of the cruelest wrong that a husband can inflict on a wife — as “Dear Catherine”? Yes: there were the words, when she put her spectacles on again. Was he in his right senses? or had he written in a state of intoxication?
Mrs. Linley waited, with a preoccupied mind: she showed no signs of impatience or surprise. As it presently appeared, she was not thinking of the letter addressed to her by Herbert, but of the letter written by Randal. “I want to look at it again.” With that brief explanation she turned at once to the closing lines which had offended her when she first read them.
Mrs. Presty hazarded a guess at what was going on in her daughter’s mind. “Now your husband has written to you,” she said, “are you beginning to think Randal’s opinion may be worth considering again?” With her eyes still on Randal’s letter, Mrs. Linley merely answered: “Why don’t you begin?” Mrs. Presty began as follows, leaving out the familiarity of her son-in-law’s address to his wife.
“I hope and trust you will forgive me for venturing to write to you, in consideration of the subject of my letter. I have something to say concerning our child. Although I have deserved the worst you can think of me, I believe you will not deny that even your love for our little Kitty (while we were living together) was not a truer love than mine. Bad as I am, my heart has that tender place left in it still. I cannot endure separation from my child.”
Mrs. Linley rose to her feet. The first vague anticipations of future atonement and reconciliation, suggested by her brother-in-law, no longer existed in her mind: she foresaw but too plainly what was to come. “Read faster,” she said, “or let me read it for myself.”
Mrs. Presty went on: “There is no wish, on my part, to pain you by any needless allusion to my claims as a father. My one desire is to enter into an arrangement which shall be as just toward you, as it is toward me. I propose that Kitty shall live with her father one half of the year, and shall return to her mother’s care for the other half If there is any valid objection to this, I confess I fail to see it.”
Mrs. Linley could remain silent no longer.
“Does he see no difference,” she broke out, “between his position and min............