When the baby was gone, and Ruth had closed the doors leading into other rooms and seated herself near to him, he seemed to have forgotten that he wanted to talk.
His eyes were fixed on the far-away hills that towered skyward, and were snow-capped; and yet she was not sure that he saw them.
"Mother," he said at last, "she told me you were a good woman, and it is true. I have always been able to anchor to you. We have trusted each other utterly, you and I, and spoken plainly to each other; we must always do so. You have something to tell me. Will you begin at the beginning and let me have all that you know? Don't try to spare me, please; I want the whole. O mother! If I had only known long ago, it might have been--different."
There was no reply that she could make to this.
After a moment, he said again: "You know that I am not blaming you, don't you? It was what I might have expected of you, what you did; she thought it was wonderful. But if she could only have trusted me!
"Will you tell me the whole, mamma? Irene told me to ask you; she said you would not tell it without her word. I mean about the man, and--the child; all the details. How did you hear of it all, and when?"
He hesitated over the simple words, his face flushing painfully. Ruth hurried her speech to save him further effort.
"Do you remember, Erskine, when our old acquaintance Mamie Parker called upon me? It was then that I heard the story."
"Mamie Parker! Is it possible that she is mixed up in our family matters?"
"She found the little girl without other care than a father could give, and interested herself in her, and loved her. She has been thus far in the child's life as dear and wise a friend as a girl could have."
Then she began at the beginning and gave in minutest detail the whole story, as it had come to her at first, and as she had since lived it with Maybelle.
Erskine's amazement at the discovery that the young girl to whom his mother had been summoned by telegram, and for whom she had cared ever since, was the one whose life-story he was now hearing, was only equalled by his pain in it all. But after the first dismayed exclamation he sat like a statue, his face partially hidden by his hand, interrupting neither by question nor comment.