"Surely she loves her own child better than she loved other children--better even than you!" said Hubert, with the soft intonation that turned the words into a compliment. "It is natural in a mother."
"One would think so," said the girl. Then, as if moved by a sudden impulse, she spoke hurriedly, with her beautiful eyes full of tears. "Oh, cousin Hubert"--it was thus that she had addressed him ever since her babyhood--"do not think that I am unkind to Florence--I do not mean it unkindly--but it does seem sometimes as if she really hated her little boy! Poor little Dick has never known what it is to have a mother's love. I am so sorry for him! I know what it is to be motherless." Hubert averted his face, and gazed into the distance. "I have lived many years without either father or mother," said the girl, in a tone the simple pathos of which seemed to pierce her hearer's heart, "but at any rate I remember what it was to have their love."
She wondered why Hubert stood motionless and irresponsive; it was not like him to be so silent when an appeal was made to his sympathy. She colored rosy red, with the instinctive fear that she had gone too far, had said something of which he did not approve, and she tried, in her naive unconsciousness of ill, to put the matter straight.
"But I have been very happy," she said earnestly. "Florence has always been kind, and dear mamma herself could not have done more for me. It is only that she seems cold and severe with Dick---- Dear cousin Hubert, I hope you are not angry with me for saying what I have said about your sister?"
He was obliged to look at her when she addressed him thus directly. She was surprised by the expression of pain--bitter humiliating pain--upon his face. Was it sympathy for her loss, she wondered, or grief for little Dick's position, or distress at her accusation of Florence that caused his face to wear that look of positive anguish? She could not tell.
"Angry?" he said, stretching out his hand and laying it tenderly on her own, while the pain in his eyes softened into a melancholy as inscrutable as the pain. "Could I ever be angry with you, Enid? Poor little lonely motherless child! Heaven knows, if I could protect you from sorrow or pain henceforth, I would do so at the cost of my life!"