“If you can do this, I can’t,” she said. “I will write to him. The other dreadful story may be true, for anything I know. And that, of course, is enough. But this one I don’t believe, if an angel from Heaven told it me. He shall at least have the chance of clearing himself!” “I don’t know,” said Bee, “what the other dreadful story was. I thought it was only pretending to love--some other woman; and then--pretending to love _me_”--she broke off into a little hoarse laugh. The offence of it was more than Bee could bear. The insult--to suffer (she said to herself) was one thing--but to be insulted! She laughed to think what a fool she had been; how she had been taken in; how she had said--oh, like the veriest credulous fool--“Till death.” “He was not pretending to love you. What went before I know not, but with you he was true.” “One before--and one after,” said Bee, rising in an irrepressible rage of indignation. “Oh, mamma, how can we sit quietly and discuss it, as if--as if it were a thing that could be talked about? Am I to come in between--two others--two---- I think it will make me mad,” the girl cried, stamping her foot. How does a man dare to do that--to insult a girl--who never sought him nor heard of him, wanted nothing of him--till he came and forced himself into her life!” “Oh! Bee, my darling,” cried the mother, going up to her child with outstretched arms. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t pet me; I cannot bear it. Let me stand by myself. I am not a little thing like Lucy to be caught up and kissed till I forget. I don’t want to forget. There is nothing that can ever be done to me, if I were to live to an hundred, to put this out of my head.” “Bee, be patient with me for a moment. I have lived longer than you have. What went before could be no offence to you, whatever it was. It might be bad, but it was no offence to you. And this--I don’t believe it----” Bee was far too much self-absorbed to see the labouring breath, the pink spot on each cheek, the panting which made her mother’s fine nostrils quiver and kept her lips apart, or that she caught at the back of a chair to support herself as she stood. “I don’t know why--you shouldn’t believe it. I don’t believe it; I see it, I hear it,” cried Bee. “It’s like a story--and I thought these things were always stories, things made up to keep up the interest in a book---- I’m the--deceived heroine, the one that’s disappointed, don’t you know, mamma? We’ve read all about her dozens of times. But she generally makes a fuss over it,” the girl said, with her suffocating laugh. “I shall make--no fuss---- Mamma! What is the matter, mamma?”