“Without a word! What words could I say? You don’t suppose I could discuss it with him--ask if it was true? If it’s true, there isn’t a word to say, is there? And if it isn’t true it would be an insult to ask him. And so one way or another it is all just done with and over. And I wish you would leave me quiet, mamma.” “Done with and over! Without a word--on a mere story of something that took place on a journey!” “Oh! leave me quiet, mamma. Do you think I need to be reminded of that journey? As if I did not see it, and the lamps burning, and hear the very wheels!” “Bee, dear, how can I leave you quiet? Do you mean just to let it break off like that, without a word, without giving him the chance to explain?” “I thought,” said Bee, with a faint satirical smile, for, indeed, her heart was capable of all bitterness, “that it was broken off completely by papa, and all that remained was only--what you called clandestine, mamma.” “I did not call it clandestine. I knew you would do nothing that was dishonourable. And it is true that it was--broken off. But, Bee! Bee! you don’t seem to feel the dreadful thing this is. After all that has passed, to let it drop in a moment, without saying a word!” “I thought it was what I ought to have done, as soon as papa’s will was made known.” “Oh! Bee, you will drive me mad. And I have got no breath to speak. So you ought, perhaps--but you have not, when perhaps there was a reason. And now, for a mere chance story, and without giving him--an opportunity--to speak for himself.” Bee raised her face, now crimson as it had before been pale. “How could I put any questions on such a thing? How could it be discussed between him and me? To think of it is bad enough, but to speak of it--mamma! How do I know, even, what words to say?” “In that case, every engagement would be at the mercy of any slanderer, if the girl never could bring herself to ask what it meant.” “I am not any girl,” cried poor Bee, with a quiver of her lip. “I am just myself. I don’t think very much of myself any more than you do, but I can’t change myself. Oh, let me alone, let me alone, mamma!” Mrs. Kingsward was very much excited. Her nostrils grew pinched and dilated in the struggle for breath; her lips were open and panting from the same cause. She was caught in that dreadful contradiction of sentiment and feeling which is worse than any unmingled catastrophe. She had been rent asunder before this by her desire to shield her daughter, yet the sense of her duty to her husband remained, and now it was the correspondence which she seemed to be called upon to defend almost at peril of her life; that actually clandestine, at least secret correspondence, of which she could not approve, which she was bound to cut short. And yet to cut it short like this was something which she could not bear. She threw aside the work with which she had been struggling and fixed her eyes on Bee, who did not look at her nor see how agitated her expression was.