Lauretta needed only a moment to summon the appropriate emotion. “Rachel—you are my child!” she exclaimed and burst into tears, expecting to be held and questioned tenderly. When nothing of the kind occurred, Lauretta let her tears subside, but gradually, making an artful effort of regaining control of herself, not risking a look yet toward her companion. When she felt that she could manage a tone of some dignity, she said, “Perhaps you did not understand what I said. I hope you did not. I—gave way. It is certainly not my desire to cause unhappiness to another. You must please forgive me. I am a woman of sensitive feeling, and I fear that for a moment I gave way to a—maternal feeling. Oh, I should not say that! I pray you forget everything that has just passed between us.”

“Very well, ma’am.”

Lauretta could not resist a direct look at her now. “There,” she said and blew her nose again, this time with a sort of delicate finality. “I am so very glad there is no harm done and that you have not guessed my secret.”

“Oh, I am perfectly aware that you bore me, ma’am.”

Back came the tears; up flew the arms. “My child!”

Rachel edged discreetly away.

Lauretta caught and held her breath, then allowed her lip to tremble, and felt with satisfaction the dropping of tears from her lashes to her cheek. “You deny a kind word, a touch for your mother?”

“I acknowledge that you bore me, madam, but not that you are my mother. Mama is my mother.”

Lauretta, not knowing how to go forward, veered. “They all suppose you so innocent!”

“People imagine children to be unnoticing, and they are not. There were so many little hints and nudges. One day I asked Aunt Selma, and Aunt Selma told me. She and Aunt Pauline told me together. They said they thought I ought to know. I was very glad to have the mystery explained. That was some years ago.”

“But you have never told Sarah that you know?”

“No, ma’am, I have not. Since she did not tell me herself, I considered that she might have her reasons—an understandable pride perhaps.”

“Pride? How do you mean that?”

“Would it be easy for her to acknowledge to me that her husband and her sister had deceived her? Surely you see how she might have felt?”

Lauretta sighed and tried to draw the drifting mood back to herself. “It was in Charleston, South Carolina. Charleston is such a pretty, romantic city, you know. I was appearing there on the stage in a play by Shakespeare. We were—Leon and I—consumed by an irresistible passion.”

“Poor Papa.”

“How dare you!”

“I do not mean to offend you, ma’am. Only Papa must have been so very confused and unhappy about it all.”