There was a look of dreary fatigue on Claire's white face as she slowly answered: "Mother, I will not leave you. I don't wish to leave you." "Oh, you don't, eh? Then why did you say you was _alone_?" "Did I say it?" returned Claire. She put one hand to her forehead. "I--I must have spoken aloud without knowing it." ... Immediately afterward she crossed the room, going very close to her mother's side, and looking with eager meaning into the cold, austere, aquiline face. "Don't be unkind to-night," she went on. "Remember this dreadful thing that has happened. It--it ought to--to soften you, Mother. It has nearly crazed _me_. I cannot reason; I can scarcely think. I--I can only suffer!" Mrs. Twining curled her mouth in bitter dissent. "Oh, you didn't know the poor man was sick when you ran off and staid for hours. No, indeed! If you had, you wouldn't 'a' worried him as you did when he come home to tea and found you gone. He fell like a log, just as he got up from the table. But he hadn't eaten hardly a thing, and I guess you know why he didn't." Claire uttered a quick, flurried cry. She grasped her mother's arm. "You--you don't mean," she exclaimed, in a piteously fierce way, "that _I_ killed Father--or--or hastened his death by--by not being home? Oh, say, Mother, that you don't mean this! It would drive me mad if I believed so! Please say it isn't true!" Claire's aspect breathed such desperation that it wrought havoc even with so stolid a perversity as that of the harsh, unpropitiable being whom she confronted. "Well, no, I don't say _that_," murmured Mrs. Twining, with sullen alteration of mien and tone. "But I _do_ say, Claire, that you was off somewhere, and _he_ was fretted and pestered because you was, and" ... Here the peculiar nature of this most tormenting woman suddenly revealed a change. Her grim mouth twitched; her nostrils produced a kind of catarrhal sniff; her cold black eyes winked, as if tears were lurking to assail them. The next words that she spoke were in a high, querulous key. "Oh! so you're the only one that's fit to mourn for that poor dead one, hey? I, his lawful wedded wife, and your own mother, ain't got any right to grieve! Oh, very well! I'm nobody at all, here. I'd better get away. You're chief mourner. There's nobody but you. I s'pose you'll pay all the expenses of the funeral, since you're so dreadful stuck-up about it!" Claire shook her head, in a pathetic, conciliating way. She lifted one finger, at the same time. Her face was still white, and her dark-blue eyes were burning feverishly. "No, no, Mother!" she said. "This is all wrong. You mustn't speak like that, here. If you didn't love him, I did. There's a little money yet. It's yours, but you'll give it; you've told me of it; it will be enough to bury Father decently. I promise you that if you _do_ give it I will try very hard to get some work that will support us both."