“Oh, shut up, shut up!” Sarah stood and paced back and forth, Lauretta watching her uncertainly. When she stopped in front of Lauretta, Sarah said, “Do you remember the letter you left for me when you went away?”

“Oh, Sarah, forget those old jealousies and complaints!”

“Be still, I say! In that letter you told me Rachel was Leon’s daughter and said that was why you could leave her. In that letter you gave the child to me.”

“Gave her into your safe keeping—of course. What else was I to do?”

“You gave her to me. I still have the letter.”

“Oh!” Lauretta declared. “It is so very wrong to keep old letters!”

“That letter was the basis of our legally adopting Rachel. Uncle Felix saw to the whole thing. Rachel is my child.”

Lauretta started to rise, fell back into the chair, her hand flying to her cheek as if she had been struck. She closed her eyes, squeezed a tear or two from them and opened them again. “What a cruel thing to say to me. How can she be yours when she is mine?”

“It is you, Lauretta, who gave her away.”

“What else could I have done?”

“I took her and learned to be grateful for the gift.”

Lauretta remained silent for a little, and then asked, “What does she think of all this? Has she never put questions to you about her real mother?”

“She considers me her mother,” Sarah said.

Lauretta laughed, not wickedly, but as though it were all a kind of family joke.

“You are welcome to stay here,” Sarah said, “but only if you agree to let Rachel alone—and not to shock her with any of the dramatic revelations I can see leaping onto your mind’s stage even now!”

Lauretta stood taller. “You ask me to remain a stranger to my own child?”

“Cease dramatizing! Is nothing real to you? Can you think of no one but yourself?”

“You have grown hard and cruel. That is what has faded you, no doubt, put lines in your face and neck—”

“Lauretta, you may stay, or you may go, but if you stay, you must promise to remain silent on the subject of your—motherhood.”

Lauretta blinked her eyes at Sarah. “I am a lone creature without friends. I suppose I must be silent.”

“I said no dramatizing—”

“Very well,” Lauretta said crossly. “I shall be quiet and good—for the time being. Yes, I agree. I can see that I do everyone a favor by keeping my own counsel. But, that you can blame me after what I’ve been through is inconceivable.”

Sarah studied her face briefly, then nodded. “You have promised.”