Her voice was dauntless, but her face mirrored the anguish that must be her daily companion.
One thing about her recital jarred upon me. This paying of servants, this furtive espionage was not in keeping with the high resolve that had led the mother to "keep her word" to the man who had ruined her life. And yet--and yet--I dared not judge her. In her place I could not imagine what I would have done.
One thing I knew. Never again would I doubt Lillian Underwood. The ghost of the past romance between my husband and the woman before me was laid for all time, never to trouble me again. Remembering the sacrifice she had made for Dicky, considering the gallant fight against circumstances she had waged since her girlhood, I felt suddenly unworthy of the friendship she had so warmly offered me.
I turned to her, trying to find words, which should fittingly express my sentiments, but she forestalled me with a kaleidoscopic change of manner that bewildered me.
"Enough of horrors," she said, springing up and giving a little expressive shake of her shoulders as if she were throwing a weight from them. "I'm going to give you some luncheon."
"Oh, please!" I put up a protesting hand, but she was across the room and pressing a bell before I could stop her.
I thought I understood. The grave of her past life was closed again. She had opened it because she wished me to know the truth concerning the old garbled stories about herself and Dicky. Having told me everything, she had pushed the grisly thing back into its sepulchre again and had sealed it. She would not refer to it again.
One thing puzzled me, something to which she had not referred--why had she married Harry Underwood? Why, after the terrible experience of her first marriage, had she risked linking her life with an unstable creature like the man who was now her husband?
I put all questionings aside, however, and tried to meet her brave, gay mood.
My mother-in-law's convalescence was as rapid as the progress of her sudden illness had been. By the day that I gave my first history lecture before the Lotus Study Club she was well enough to dismiss Dr. Pettit with, one of her sudden imperious speeches, and to make plans that evening for the welcoming and entertaining of her daughter Harriet and her famous son-in-law Dr. Edwin Braithwaite, who were expected next day on their way to Europe, where Doctor was to take charge of a French hospital at the front.