“Wasn’t it curious? And especially when you reflect how many distinguished people she knows! But she brought me a sheet of very fine paper that afternoon, and said: ‘I don’t want you to write now. I don’t want you to write till our voyage is nearly over. Then I want you to write the truth as to your feeling for me. No matter what it is, I want it to be the truth, so that I may keep it always.’ I took the sheet and wrote on it, ‘I wish you were my mother.’ That was the truth. I do wish every hour that this woman were my mother. But she refused to read what I had written, saying: ‘I will keep it, child, unread until the end of the voyage. Then I’ll give it back to you if you wish, and you shall write again whatever you are prompted to write, be it this or something quite different.’ “Curiously enough, her name is in effect the same as my own, translated into French. She is Madame Le Sud. That means Mrs. South, of course, and when I called her attention to the fact, she said: ‘perhaps that may suggest an additional bond of affection between us.’” Several days passed before Dorothy resumed her writing. “I haven’t added a line to my letter for two or three days past. That’s because I have been so busy learning to know and love Madame Le Sud. She is the very sweetest and most charming woman I ever saw in my life. She is a trifle less than forty--just old enough I tell her, to be my mother if it had happened in that way. Then she asked me about my real mother and I couldn’t tell her anything. I couldn’t even tell when she died, or what her name had been or anything about her. Isn’t it a strange thing, Cousin Arthur, that nobody has ever told me anything about my mother? It makes me ashamed when I think of it, and still more ashamed when I remember that I never asked anything about her, except once. That time I asked my father some question and he answered only by quickly rising and going out to mount his horse and ride away all alone. That is the way he always did when things distressed him, and as I didn’t want to distress him I never asked him anything more about my mother. But why haven’t I been told about her? Was she bad? And is that why everybody has been so anxious about me, fearing that I might be bad? Even if that were so they ought to have told me about my mother, especially after I began to grow up and know how to stand things bravely. May be when I was too little to understand it was better to keep silent. But when I grew older there was no excuse for not telling me the truth. I don’t think there ever is any excuse for that. The truth is the only thing in the world that a sane person ought to love. I’m only seventeen years old, but I’m old enough to have found out that much, and I don’t think I shall ever quite forgive those who have shut out from me the truth about my mother. You, Cousin Arthur, haven’t had any hand in that. I never asked you, but I know. If you had known about my mother you’d have told me. You could not