"Oh! dear me, that is exactly the exasperating sort of thing your father would have said. He was a good man also--the kind of man I most particularly hate. Never mind, I'll make everything plain to you. I've held my tongue long enough. Now I am going to speak out, and take back to my hungry heart the baby girl I loved." "Did you really love me?" asked Beatrice doubtfully. "Yes--really I did. You were all that I had to love, as my husband--the first one, your father--was a kind of stone image with no feelings and no affections. I loved you fondly, and wanted to be your dearest mother--which I certainly am--but that Durban and that horrid Alpenny were too strong for me. No, it wasn't Alpenny. I don't think he wanted to bring you up; but Durban insisted, and I gave way." "Why did you?" "There were reasons," said Lady Watson evasively, and a spot of red burned on either cheek. "They must have been strong reasons to make a mother surrender her child to the care of strangers." "Durban wasn't a stranger. He was in the house when you were born; and really you might have been his own child, from the fuss he made over you. But Colonel Hall--your father, my dear--saved Durban from being lynched in America, and Durban always pretended that he loved him dearly." "I am sure Durban did," insisted Beatrice. "He is not a man who says one thing and does another." "That is just what he does do," cried Lady Watson, fanning herself with a flimsy handkerchief all lace and scent. "Look at the way he has kept you in the dark all these years. And I am quite sure that he has told you heaps and heaps of lies! These niggers never can tell the truth." "Durban told me as little as he could," confessed Beatrice; "but he never told me a deliberate lie, I am sure. But if you are my mother, who is the woman who is buried as you?" "Not as me--the idea!" protested Lady Watson; "as Alpenny's wife--and a nice bargain she got in that old scoundrel! She was Amelia Hedge, and called herself Mrs. Hedge when she married Alpenny, to account for you. It wasn't my fault. I'm sure I always liked to have you with me, Beatrice, as you were such a pretty child, and it looks well to have one's children about one, nowadays. But Durban would insist that I should give you up--and perhaps he was right after all," ended Lady Watson candidly "as Sir Reginald--my second husband--would never have married a widow with a child." So the weak little woman babbled on, and Beatrice felt her heart sink as she at last beheld her mother. To think that this frivolous and weak creature should have given her birth! Then a thought came to her. "Durban said that my mother was quiet and silent."