After his mother had watched, with the nervous tremors with which one watches when all that one has is jumping from a moving train--until Erskine was lifting his hat to her from safe ground, and her train was gliding away from him, she drew a deep breath of relief; not only from that immediate tension, but all the hours which had preceded it. Every moment since the arrival of that telegram had been a nervous strain to her, because of the things that she must say, and the things that she must not say.
Irene, especially, had taxed her honesty and ingenuity to the utmost. From the first moment, the young woman had been curious and painstaking in trying to satisfy herself.
"The idea!" she would exclaim. "It seems to me that is asking a great deal of an old woman; and Erskine says this Miss Parker is only a passing acquaintance. What possible claim can she have on you? Why is she so interested in this girl? Do you understand it? It looks as though there was a love affair, somewhere, doesn't it? She is an old maid, of course. You can depend upon it that she was in love with that girl's father!"
There was a side to this woman which Ruth in her secret soul called coarse. So far as she knew, it was a phase of her character that was never exhibited to Erskine.
With her fine regard for truth, and her contempt of anything like subterfuge, Mrs. Burnham found it hard to satisfy the curious questioner, and yet keep back that part of the truth which she must not tell. She could not but be glad when the strain was over.
Not once had she mentioned the name of the girl. It had been a continual terror to her lest she should be asked it; but though Irene asked every possible question that might throw light on the mystery, she had been mercifully preserved from thinking of names. Mrs. Burnham had learned from Miss Parker that the first name, Maybelle, would reveal nothing; it had been chosen by the father for his still nameless child, months after the mother's desertion; and chosen for no better reason than that Baby had come in the month of May, and was a "little beauty." But the name of Somerville might at least have startled Irene, had she heard it; and her mother-in-law determined that she should not. Having resolved upon silence as the right course, the more absolute it could be, the better for all concerned.