“One before--and one after,” said Bee, rising in an irrepressible rage of indignation. “Oh, mamma, how can we sit quietly and discuss it, as if--as if it were a thing that could be talked about? Am I to come in between--two others--two---- I think it will make me mad,” the girl cried, stamping her foot. How does a man dare to do that--to insult a girl--who never sought him nor heard of him, wanted nothing of him--till he came and forced himself into her life!”
“Oh! Bee, my darling,” cried the mother, going up to her child with outstretched arms.
“Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t pet me; I cannot bear it. Let me stand by myself. I am not a little thing like Lucy to be caught up and kissed till I forget. I don’t want to forget. There is nothing that can ever be done to me, if I were to live to an hundred, to put this out of my head.”
“Bee, be patient with me for a moment. I have lived longer than you have. What went before could be no offence to you, whatever it was. It might be bad, but it was no offence to you. And this--I don’t believe it----”
Bee was far too much self-absorbed to see the labouring breath, the pink spot on each cheek, the panting which made her mother’s fine nostrils quiver and kept her lips apart, or that she caught at the back of a chair to support herself as she stood.
“I don’t know why--you shouldn’t believe it. I don’t believe it; I see it, I hear it,” cried Bee. “It’s like a story--and I thought these things were always stories, things made up to keep up the interest in a book---- I’m the--deceived heroine, the one that’s disappointed, don’t you know, mamma? We’ve read all about her dozens of times. But she generally makes a fuss over it,” the girl said, with her suffocating laugh. “I shall make--no fuss---- Mamma! What is the matter, mamma?”
Nothing more was the matter than the doctor could have told Mrs. Kingsward’s family long ago--a spasm of the heart. She stumbled backward to the sofa, and flung herself down before consciousness forsook her. Did consciousness forsake her at all? Bee rushing to the bell, making its violent sound peal through the house, then flinging herself at her mother’s feet, and calling to her in the helplessness of utter ignorance, “Mamma, mamma!” did not think that she was unconscious. Broken words fell from her in the midst of her gasps for breath, then there was a moment of dread stillness. By this time the room seemed to be full of people--Bee did not know who was there--and then there suddenly appeared out of the mist Moulsey with a glass and teaspoon in her hands.