"Oh, I didn’t deserve it!" she cried. "I have remained silent when my mother was heaping abuse upon you. I made no effort to do you justice when your enemies were crying you down. Oh, Mrs. Boyd, you are the best and most unselfish woman that ever lived." "No, I am not that," Ann declared, firmly. "I’m just like the general run of women, weak and wishy-washy, with dry powder in my make-up that anybody can touch a match to. There is no counting on what I’ll do next. Right now I feel like being your stanch friend, but I really don’t know but what, if your mammy hemmed me in a corner, I’d even throw up to her what you did that night. I say I don’t know what notion might strike me. She can, with one word or look of hers, start perdition’s fire in me. I don’t know any more than a cat what made me go contrary to my plans that night. It wasn’t in a thousand miles of what I wanted to do, and having Jane Hemingway come back here with a sound body and tongue of fire isn’t what I saved money to pay for. If forgiveness is to be the white garment of the next life, mine will be as black as logwood dye." "The pretty part of it all is that you don’t know yourself as you really are," Virginia said, almost smiling in her enthusiasm. "Since I’ve seen the beautiful side of your character I’ve come almost to understand the eternal wisdom even in human ills. But for your hatred of my mother, your kindness to me would not be so wonderful. For a long time I had only my mother to love, but now, Mrs. Boyd, somehow, I have not had as great anxiety about her down there as I thought I would have. Really, my heart has been divided between you two. Mrs. Boyd, I love you. I can’t help it—I love you." Ann suddenly raised her sheet and folded it in her lap. Her face had softened; there was a wonderful spiritual radiance in her eyes. "It’s powerful good and sweet of you to—to talk that way to a poor, despised outcast like I am. I can’t remember many good things being said about me, and when you say you feel that way towards me, why—well, it’s sweet of you—that’s all, it’s sweet and kind of you." "You have _made_ me love you," Virginia said, simply. "I could not help myself." Ann looked straight at the girl from her moist, beaming eyes.